KARACHI, Oct 24: The five suspects arrested in a paintings theft case were remanded to the police custody till October 28, by judicial magistrate South, Rahmat Ullah Moro, on Friday.

Police on Wednesday night arrested five suspects and recovered about 20 stolen works of art which were said to include works of Abdul Rehman Chughtai and Sadequain. Seven of these were allegedly recovered from Jehanzeb Art Gallery of Iqbal Durrani.

The artist, who has been arrested by the police for displaying stolen paintings at his art gallery, said he had bought the paintings not knowing they were stolen.

“I am not a fool to display stolen paintings in my art gallery. If I had known that Manzoor was selling me stolen paintings, I would have never purchased them,” said Iqbal Durrani who appeared exhausted at the Darakshan police station on Friday.

Referring to the recovery of the seven paintings from his gallery, Mr Durrani told Dawn that he had bought those paintings from one of the suspects, Manzoor Ahmed, who had worked for several years at the Collector’s Art Gallery owned by Mr Sultan Mahmood. He said Mr Mahmood had closed down the gallery even before he was paralysed.

“Manzoor, who was a trusted employee of Mr Mahmood, used to pursue me to buy paintings saying his employers needed cash. Out of this consideration, and also because I am running an art gallery, I bought those paintings,” said Mr Durrani.

“I have given 25 years of my life to art and this country, and this is what I am getting in return,” said an emotionally charged Mr Durrani, who is a kidney patient, and added that he was a self-made man and would leave the country once the issue was settled.

Questioning the authenticity of the police claim that the paintings are worth Rs15 million, he claimed that almost all the paintings which the police claimed to have recovered were third-rate reproductions picked up from Bhori Bazar. “Even the painting of Abdul Rehman Chughtai is not original but a reproduction,” he added.

Mr Durrani regretted that police had even picked up an elderly frame-maker named Qamru in the case.

A police official posted at the Darakshan police station, on condition of anonymity, remarked that Mr Durrani seemed to have no role in the case. “The real suspects are Manzoor and Abid,” he said.

Mohammad Abid and Mohammad Afsar, former employees at the complainant’s house, said that Mr Sultan Mahmood, the proprietor of the Collectors Art Gallery in Clifton, had closed down the gallery and all the paintings were dumped in the store-room of the house. Shortly after, Mr Mahmood suffered a stroke.

Abid said that Manzoor, who was a trusted employee of the family, told them to pass on paintings whenever he said. He confessed that paintings were taken out of the house by him during a span of nine or eight months.