Kiran Nadar to pay 1.6crfor Ravi Varma painting

CHENNAI: "Who knows if these very pictures, now painted for maharajas, will not find their way to the museums one day," the acclaimed artist Raja Ravi Varma once said. The artist turned out to be prescient. But one of his paintings, 'Jatayu Vadham', found its way to a protracted legal wrangle.
An arbitration tribunal has directed Kiran Nadar, wife of HCL founder Shiv Nadar, to pay 1.6 crore as the cost of a Ravi Varma painting she purchased and later contested to be a fake.
Bangalore-based auctioneer Bid and Hammer Auctioneer Pvt Ltd put on auction the 120-year-old 'Jatayu Vadham' in November 2010. To establish its originality, it had secured a registration under the Antiques and Art Treasures Act, 1972. In September 2011, SKN Investments (Chennai) Pvt Ltd represented by Kiran Nadar paid 50% (79,72,595) as the bid amount.
Two months after receiving the painting, Nadar sent a technical report which said it was a duplicate. According to the sale contract terms, any dispute was to be settled by arbitration. The Karnataka high court constituted an arbitration tribunal headed by Justice R Gururajan.
Nadar said the auctioneer did not have a valid licence for sale. The Kerala high court had banned the sale of the painting. Also, since art experts employed by her said it was a fake, the terms of sale stood annulled because of "fraud and misrepresentation", she contended.
The tribunal said a PIL had earlier been filed in the Kerala high court to stop the auction of the painting. The court granted an interim injunction restraining its sale but later vacated the injunction. In its order, the high court said there was no notification from the Centre specifying that the painting had to be registered under the Antiques and Art Treasures Act.
Also, the auctioneer had applied for a licence to the Archaeological Survey of India, which said the AAT Act did not have any provision to issue licences to auction antiquities, the tribunal noted, so Bid and Hammer did not commit any illegality by not obtaining a licence.
Stating that there was no "fraudulent concealment," the tribunal said the auctioneer had provided Nadar with "sufficient opportunity to examine the painting". She paid the bid amount after inspecting the painting, it said. She did not cancel the sale nor did she return the painting.
The allegation that it was a fake was based on the report of an art expert. The tribunal said the expert's report had actually said: "It is very unlikely... that it is an original painting."
"Suspicion or a doubt can never be proof in a court of law. When an expert inspects a painting, he should be positive and cannot leave the question unanswered. An expert, while considering the authenticity of a painting, speaks for the dead artist and should be positive. Otherwise he would be doing great injustice to the painter," the tribunal said.
As Nadar herself had employed an expert, there was no need for the tribunal to seek another expert's opinion, it said, directing Nadar to pay the balance with 12% interest.