Figure of the month: 240,000 US dollars

In no country in the world is gold jewellery as popular as in India: 11 per cent of the world's gold is owned by the Indian population. The reason for this is the special significance that the precious metal holds in the country's tradition. During the wedding season from late autumn to winter, the Indian middle class in particular buys so much gold for wedding dresses, jewellery, wedding gifts and dowries that it even has an impact on global gold demand. Therefore, anyone in India who wants to shine in the truest sense of the word when it comes to gold jewellery has to go to extraordinary lengths.

A shirt made of 3.5 kilograms of gold and Swarovski buttons

In 2012, Datta Pughe, a wealthy moneylender from the Indian city of Pimpri, had a shirt made for himself out of 22-carat gold, along with a matching gold belt, bracelets and rings. He chose six Swarovski crystals as shirt buttons. The unusual garment cost him a total of $240,000, earning him the nickname ‘Gold Man of Pimpri’ – and his shirt gained entry into the Guinness Book of Records. In an interview with the Indian daily newspaper ‘The Pune Mirror’ in 2013, he said that the reason why he had commissioned the golden shirt was to attract women's attention, since he did not consider himself particularly attractive.

No happy ending for the man in the golden shirt

However, Pughes' ostentatious display of wealth did not only attract women interested in wealthy men. In July 2016, he was lured into an ambush by twelve men. He succumbed to his injuries later that day.  While the golden shirt itself played no role in the crime, his high profile in business and society likely did. According to police sources cited in October 2016 by the Abu Dhabi-based daily ‘The National’, the murder appears to have stemmed from disputes with business rivals.