Valued at Rs 1 Crore, M F Husain painting at centre of legal battle between 2 Congress leaders

Rohit Singh Mahiyaria, Thakur’s son and an art collector, is the complainant in this case. He had approached the Sessions Court against a Magistrate court order dated March 21, 2025, which had dismissed his complaint.

“…a holistic reading of the entire chain of SMS messages exchanged immediately prior to the aforesaid message clearly indicates that the complainant’s mother had been persistently requesting the return of the painting,” said Special Judge Jitendra Singh of Rouse Avenue Court in his order dated November 11.

“The Ld. Trial Court, while dismissing the complaint, appears to have primarily relied upon a solitary SMS sent by CW-2, Dr Prabha Thakur, at 10:34 am, to infer that the painting in question had been gifted to respondent no. 2 (Jitendra). The said message, which was selectively extracted and relied upon by the Court, reads as under: ‘Hussain’s painting of Ganesh is v expensive. My son can’t afford to gift you so pl return his painting. Pl call me. I have sent you many SMS but no response. Rohit is v upset blaming me (sic)’,” Judge Singh added in his order.

According to Rohit’s complaint, in April 2014, Bhanwar Singh had approached his mother to borrow the painting with “the intention of showing it to his wife”, who was “an admirer of Husain’s work”. While Prabha Thakur agreed as they knew each other personally, she informed him that the valuation of the painting exceeded Rs 1 crore.

A few days later, she asked for her painting and Bhanwar allegedly refused to return it. Three years passed. As per the complaint, Bhanwar then said that he was unable to locate the painting. In July 2018, the complainant’s brother met Bhanwar Singh in a train where he allegedly refused to return the painting.

According to the court records, Prabha had sent the following texts to the Congress leader: “Dear Shri Bhanwar…kindly return the Hussain Ganesha painting which is worth 80 lakh as my son Rohit is very upset…”, “Please send me my son’s paintings of Husain” and “Not sending our paintings, this is not fair…”

Prabha told The Indian Express, “We were friends, hence, I decided to give the paintings. I had decided not to pursue the case earlier since we are leaders from the same state. I requested him many times to return it, saying that we can’t afford such a gift.”

“My son and I didn’t even speak for 3-4 months. He was so upset,” she said.

“We had no rivalry at all. Door door tak koi matter hi nahi tha. Why would my son pursue such a case? Had we gotten the painting back, we would not have filed the complaint. I waited so long. It was so unexpected for me,” she added.

Referring to the exchange of messages, Judge Singh said, “When the entire sequence of communications is read conjointly, the inference drawn by the Ld. Trial Court (Magistrate court) that the painting was gifted to the respondent no. 2 is manifestly unsustainable,” . He also summoned Bhanwar Singh to appear before the court on November 25 for further proceedings.

During the court hearing, Bhanwar counsel had argued that Prabha had sought political favours from him, which the former had denied. It was because of this, he claimed, that the present complaint was lodged out of “political animosity”.

He had also argued that there was a five-year delay between the alleged act and the filing of the complaint. He had also said that the allegation that a painting of Hindu deity Ganesha was handed over in April 2014 and not returned is false and unsubstantiated.

On the other hand, the complainant’s counsel argued that the trial court had not examined the entire sequence of messages in the proper context and had “erroneously relied upon an isolated portion”. The findings of the magistrate court, he argued, were founded on “presumptions and inferences drawn from facts which do not exist on record”.