The townhouse is partway down Mumbai’s seafront promenade. It is typical of the decadent-but-decaying colonial buildings occupied by some of the city’s upper-class families, a renovation decades overdue. Yet the building, with its dim hallways and expansive, marble-floored rooms inside, occupies an enviable location. A few minutes’ walk from the Gateway of India, it overlooks shoreline palm trees and sailboats on the Arabian Sea.
Urrshila Kerkar jokes that her family’s flat does not look like the residence of someone who has allegedly stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. “I wish we had all the money everyone thought we had taken,” the 63-year-old says.
The townhouse is only steps away from the historic Taj Mahal Palace, India’s grandest hotel, which has hosted generations of European royalty and US presidents, and is where the Kerkar family began to make its name and fortune 50 years ago. Urrshila’s father, former Taj head Ajit Baburao Kerkar, and then she and her brother Peter, are credited by many with pioneering India’s modern travel industry.
Today the…
