It is a well-known fact that the art world is booming. Works by some of India's most reputed painters have been selling in international auctions for unheard-of sums of money. When prices of products soar, fakes are never far behind. This is as true of art products as of any other products. Artists who have acquired high levels of mimic skills rule the fakes market. Choosing high-selling painters with clearly defined signature styles, they produce works so identical in subject matter and style to theirs that the difference might escape even the expert eye.

It is alleged that some collectors and galleries work hand in glove with the copyists, helping to grease their products into the fakes market. The modus operandi goes thus. They buy the fakes at modest prices and sell them at exorbitant sums to the new breed of collectors who buy works as investment with very little interest in or knowledge of art. In a recent event that has caused a major stir in the art world, the original artist has got embroiled in a totally unexpected way in the fakes market. Here is the whole murky tale. Quite appropriately, it happened on All Fools Day.

An acrylic-on-canvas work, Woman with Flower, by the prolific and popular painter Ranjan Khanna, was scheduled to go under the hammer at an auction held in Delhi on 1 April. It now transpires that Khanna had himself informed the concerned auction house that the work was a fake. However, the gallery that owned the painting and had now put it up for auction, asserted that they had bought it directly from the artist four years ago, that is, in the year 2000. How then could it be a fake? It was a question that only the artist could have answered. Unfortunately, by a tragic coincidence, he suffered a massive stroke the day after he informed the auction house about the fake and is reported to have lost his speech.

The concerned auction house has stated that it operates under rigorous regulations that do not permit it to sell a work that has come under even the smallest shadow of doubt. Accordingly, they have withdrawn Woman with Flower from the auction. However, this does not mean that the work is, in fact, a fake. There is a question mark against it and it now stands in an area of greyness between the artist's word, which has been silenced, and the gallery's, which holds no value without the other.