Nirav Modi was an Indian-born jewellery brand and the man who built it — both rose to international visibility in the early 2010s and collapsed together in 2018 with the unravelling of what Indian authorities call one of the largest financial frauds in the country's history. The brand had positioned itself in a few short years as an Indian house with global pretensions, opening flagships on Madison Avenue in New York, in Hong Kong, and in Mumbai, and producing high jewellery featuring large polished diamonds in distinctive cuts. The fraud allegations — concerning fraudulent letters of undertaking issued by Punjab National Bank — caused the brand to disintegrate in early 2018, and the case became a major national story in India and an international extradition case in the United Kingdom.

Background and brand

Nirav Deepak Modi was born in 1971 into a family of Gujarati diamantaires based in Antwerp and Mumbai, and trained in the diamond trade through the family business. He launched his eponymous brand in 2010, distinct from the family enterprises Firestar Diamond and Gitanjali Group (the latter founded by his uncle Mehul Choksi, also subsequently accused of fraud). The brand presented itself as a contemporary Indian high-jewellery house with an international design vocabulary and a focus on diamonds in proprietary cuts. Boutiques opened in 2014 in Defence Colony, New Delhi, and rapidly thereafter in New York (565 Madison Avenue), Hong Kong, Beijing, Macau, London, and Mumbai.

The product was high jewellery and bridal jewellery featuring diamonds (often very large), with marketing built around celebrity endorsements (Priyanka Chopra was a brand ambassador), red-carpet appearances, and association with Indian and international film stars. The visual identity of the brand emphasised modern, often architectural settings, distinct from traditional Indian high-jewellery design.

The Punjab National Bank fraud

In late January and early February 2018, Punjab National Bank (PNB) — India's second-largest public-sector bank — disclosed a major fraud at its Brady House branch in Mumbai involving fraudulent letters of undertaking (LoUs) issued to companies associated with Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. The LoUs allowed the borrowers to obtain credit from foreign branches of Indian banks against the supposed guarantees, with the bank exposed to liability. The total fraud was eventually pegged at approximately US$2 billion, then revised upward in subsequent investigations. PNB filed criminal complaints with the Central Bureau of Investigation in late January 2018; the news broke publicly in early February.

Modi and his immediate family had left India in early January 2018, before the public disclosure. The Indian Enforcement Directorate, CBI, and Interpol initiated international cooperation requests, and Indian authorities froze and seized assets including the boutique inventories, properties, art collections, and luxury vehicles associated with Modi and his companies. The brand effectively ceased operations within weeks; remaining inventory at the international boutiques was placed under receivership or seized.

Arrest and extradition

Modi was located in London in early 2019 and arrested in March 2019 on an Indian extradition request. He has remained in custody at HM Prison Wandsworth in London while his extradition has progressed through the United Kingdom courts. The Westminster Magistrates' Court ruled in February 2021 that he could be extradited to face charges in India; subsequent appeals have addressed mental health, prison conditions, and procedural matters, and the case has continued for years through successive levels of appeal. As of the most recent public reporting, Modi remains in UK custody pending the resolution of those proceedings.

Auction of seized property

The Indian Income Tax Department conducted high-profile auctions of property and personal possessions seized from Modi and his family, including art (notably an Amrita Sher-Gil painting), wristwatches, vehicles, and jewellery, with proceeds going to creditors and the public exchequer. The auctions attracted significant press coverage and treated the disposal as both a recovery exercise and a public spectacle. Some of the seized jewellery was offered for sale; reports of the sales and prices realised provide one of the few public records of the inventory the brand had assembled.

Position in jewellery history

The Nirav Modi case is significant in the history of Indian luxury jewellery for two reasons. It marked the most ambitious internationalisation by an Indian-origin diamond-led brand to date — boutiques in Madison Avenue and Bond Street were a step beyond what most Indian houses had attempted — and it ended in spectacular collapse, providing a cautionary case study about the relationship between commercial jewellery, banking finance, and trade-credit fraud. The case has been widely analysed in Indian financial press and academic finance literature, and is frequently cited alongside the contemporaneous Vijay Mallya case as a marker of Indian banking sector reform discussions.

In the trade

For collectors and dealers, surviving Nirav Modi pieces are an unusual category. They carry brand provenance from a now-defunct house, with secondary-market valuations that are difficult to pin down — the brand cannot stand behind warranties, and the stigma of the underlying fraud may suppress demand. Pieces sold through the Indian government auctions came with formal documentation but were sold in haste; subsequent secondary trades are sparse and lightly documented. Buyers should approach pieces with care and obtain laboratory documentation for any significant diamonds.

Further reading

• BBC — Nirav Modi case coverage and extradition proceedings
• Reuters — PNB fraud and Nirav Modi reporting
• Financial Times — Indian banking fraud and Nirav Modi
• The Hindu — Nirav Modi domestic Indian coverage