In October 2007, some international photographers, who had come to Mumbai to click two aspiring models Tushar Narvekar and Nitin Gupta, had invited Gaetan to Delhi.

Gaetan had clicked nude picture of both the models, following which Mumbai police booked him for obscenity. Ironically, none of the two models ever approached the police, and the pictures were never circulated, but only sent to the models through email, said Gaetan’s lawyer Sameer Vaidya.

Gaetan, the son of a former governor of Congo, was arrested in January last year and had to spend nearly four months in Arthur Road jail as he could not arrange for a local surety. The police, in initial reports filed before the court, also suggested Gaetan, who was arrested under several sections of Indian Penal Code and a stricter Information Technology Act, was a pedophile. However, in the chargesheet, the case was restricted only to the nude photographs.

“We argued that Gaetan had not sent the pictures to anybody but the models and it was a pure portfolio that was prepared completely after obtaining their consent. Then where does the point of obscenity arise? The police made a case out of no case and harassed my client. He was lodged in prison for four months and his health deteriorated to a great extent. Even his family had to face a lot of problems back in Belgium,” said Vaidya.

Trying to draw a parallel with another controversial artist MF Hussain, Vaidya had cited extensively from a Supreme Court judgment in Hussain’s case to say that Gaetan’s work too was art and had nothing that merited as obscene.