The Bombay High Court Friday directed the Customs Department to immediately release seven confiscated ‘nude’ artworks by renowned artists F N Souza and Akbar Padamsee. It said the artworks should be released within two weeks.
It quashed and set aside the department’s July 1, 2024, order that confiscated the artworks by labelling them under the ‘obscene material’ category and prohibited them for import.
A bench of Justices Mahesh S Sonak and Jitendra S Jain, earlier this week, while hearing a plea by a company owned by a city-based businessman and collector, had restrained authorities from destroying the confiscated artworks. They were seized in 2023.
The petitioner firm BK Polimex India Pvt Ltd, a company owned by Mumbai-based businessman and art collector Mustafa Karachiwala, claimed that the Assistant Commissioner of Customs had seized the artworks in an ‘arbitrary and capricious’ manner and imposed a fine of Rs 50,000 on the petitioner.
In April, last year, the Special Cargo Commissionerate of the Customs Department in Mumbai seized a consignment of seven artworks including a folio of four erotic drawings by Souza, with one of them titled ‘Lovers’. The consignment also included three other pieces by Padamsee, one drawing titled ‘Nude’ and two photographs.
In 2022, three nude artworks of Padamsee and four of Souza were purchased at auction houses Roseberys in London, and Lyon & Turnbull in Scotland.
The petitioner claimed the seizure was in violation of constitutional rights that protected artistic expression and the officials did not even rely on experts’ opinions.
The petitioner argued that the drawings are publicly available and are also on the website of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). The lawyers for the petitioner said that the recognition that the works of two artists’ have got should not be “overshadowed by misplaced perceptions of obscenity as the artworks hold national and cultural value.”
The plea sought direction to quash and set aside the impugned order and declare it to be without authority and in violation of Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution.
It also sought direction to the Customs Department to not give effect or take any steps pursuant to the said order. The plea further sought the release of seven artworks.
The HC had on October 21, while passing the restraining order, had asked customs officials if they could have applied their own notion of what is obscenity and remarked that “mature society is the one that appreciates criticism.” The bench also referred to the ban on the book Lady Chatterley’s Lover and the standards that the Supreme Court used to decide the case.
