Sharma and Shafi in Delhi on Thursday. Picture by Prem Singh

New Delhi, July 22: Anjolie Ela Menon’s assistant of 20 years, Hamid Shafi, and the owner of a framing house in south Delhi, Suraj Sharma, were arrested by Delhi police today on charges of faking and selling the artist’s paintings.

This is the first instance in the country of a painter filing a complaint about forgery and sale of their art. Menon had approached Nizamuddin police station about a year ago, saying three fake paintings were doing the rounds of the art market. The case was handed over to the Intellectual Property Rights section of the economic offences wing.

The police have registered a case of fraud, destruction of evidence and copyright violation following the arrests. The two were allegedly involved in faking and selling Menon’s The Female Head and Brahmin Boy.

Another Menon fake, Oval Lady, has emerged in Delhi. Parveen Upadhyay, who is linked to the capital’s Pioneer Art Gallery, has come forward with the fake that he received from a source, according to Dinesh Bhatt, the deputy commissioner of police.

“Upadhyay had this painting and when he contacted Menon to authenticate it, she pointed out that it was a fake. He has given us the fake painting,” said Bhatt.

Shafi, according to Bhatt, confessed to making Blue Lady, which is the fake of The Female Head, as well as a fake of Brahmin Boy. He sold the fakes to Sharma, the owner of Sharma Framing House in Lajpat Nagar, for a paltry Rs 12,000 each. Sharma sold Blue Lady to the Mumbai-based Gallery 7 for Rs 2.5 lakh and the fake of Brahmin Boy for Rs 3.5 lakh.

Blue Lady initially did not have Menon’s signature, but when this was forged on to it, the price of the painting in the next transaction — to Gallery 7 — jumped to Rs 2.5 lakh, sources said.

However, the painting lacked authentication by the artist. When Sushma Aggarwal decided to buy the painting for Rs 5 lakh — double the average price for a Menon painting — she sent the painter a photograph. The artist informed her that she had a fake painting and the original was in London.

The fake of Brahmin Boy was also bought from Gallery 7. However, buyer Ritu Prakash returned it to the gallery after art experts, including Geeta Mehra, Paresh Maity and Dinesh Vazirani, opined that the painting was not genuine.

The police team is working on the basis of photographs and information supplied by Menon on the “fake” status of the paintings.

However, the paintings purported to be fake are missing. “When a case of forgery was registered, Suraj Sharma returned the paintings to Hamid, who told us that he had destroyed the two paintings,” said Bhatt.

“Though we have pieced together the route of transactions, we are now gathering the evidence,” said K.K. Vyas, the additional deputy commissioner of police, economic offences wing.

During questioning, Shafi claimed that he did most of the painting and even offered to give video testimony. Menon, however, has rubbished this claim.