Jon launched his fashion line in 1999 after graduating from the Parsons School of Design in New York and was named a person to watch in 2007 by Newsweek magazine. He dressed the likes of Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Alanis Morisette and Bruce Springsteen, and partied in the elite New York circles.

This year, he was planning to launch his jeans label, Jeanisis, star in a reality TV show on VH1 and was also slated to act in a Gurinder Chadha film, where he would play an Indian designer.

For Jon’s friends and acquaintances, the case has come as a shock. “This is most shocking. I hope it is not true,” said fashion reviewer Bandana Tewari, a friend of Jon’s sister Sanjana.

“This was his time as he’d just stepped into the limelight,” says Mumbai-based designer Azeem Khan, whose brother, New York-based designer Naeem Khan, is a friend of Jon’s. “He just doesn’t seem the kind.”

A protégé of the late designer Gianni Versace, Jon’s work is a fusion of Indian motifs (gold embroidery and symbols of snakes and flowers) with Western sensibility (tight leather, flattering jeans). His long skirts and beaded gowns have been stocked at stores like Bergdorf Goodman and Henri Bendel.

“He is among the few Indians who was acknowledged in the commercial market in America,” says Sunil Sethi, buyer and CEO of Alliance Merchandising.

His debut at New York Fashion Week in 1999 paved the way for Indian designers like Ashish Soni and Sabyasachi Mukherjee. “His was the first Indo-American breakthrough. With him, they realised that fashion was happening in India. We were welcomed because of him,” says Soni.