Here is S P Yadav, IFS, felicitating Minister Bhupendra Yadav with a 3D tiger paper artwork, 'handcrafted by' artist Vikas Tomar, at the Global Big Cats Alliance photography event in Oct 2025.
Everything seemed fine until Japanese paper artist pointed out that the piece is a 100% frame-to-frame plagiarism of her original work, used without permission. And plagiarism is one thing, but passing off a copied artwork as your own at an international event requires a different level of audacity.
The Japanese artist is tweeting about it in Japanese, so the issue isn’t getting widespread attention, but those who’ve noticed are already using it to tarnish India’s image.
Time and again, people like Vikas Tomar indulge in this audacious chindipana and end up embarrassing the country. How did he manage to present plagiarised work to a Union Minister? Who facilitated it? This needs a proper probe.
