Subhash Kapoor, 63, once the most famous Indian antique dealer in Madison Avenue, New York, and now languishing in a Chennai prison for alleged theft of idols from ancient temples in south India, never mixed business with pleasure.
Two years ago, he had dragged his ex-lover, also an art dealer, to an American court asking her to return the items he had given to her for selling.
Kapoor, a US citizen, who was in a relationship with Singapore woman Paramspry Ponusamy from 1998 to 2007, claimed that she was supposed to return the artefacts, mainly from Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia, worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars, which were unsold.
She claimed that those were gifts from him. However, the court issued an order in favour of Kapoor though both sides were unable to produce documents to support their claims. He had then told the media that he doesn’t like to mix business with pleasure. He kept his business and social life apart, maintaining separate e-mail addresses for personal and business communication.
The Tamil Nadu and Kerala police describe Kapoor as the most wanted idol thief. In New York, through his gallery Art of the Past, he was an important patron of South Asian arts. His shop had a stock of nearly 5,000 items and his client list included major museums across the world.
The Metropolitan museum of art, New York, the Los Angeles county museum of art, Birmingham museum of art and many other museums used to buy regularly from Kapoor.