£127,000 gold shirt: Indian businessman’s 4kg garment is worth its weight in gold

Textile businessman sports a flank of bodyguards as he tries out his new attire

Indian businessman Pankaj Parakh is escorted as he is wearing a four-kilograms shirt made of gold in Mumbai, India.

An Indian businessman has treated himself for his 45th birthday in a way like no other: by having a shirt made out of gold.

Pankaj Parakh, a local politician and the owner of a multi-million pound textile business near Mumbai, has had the shirt created out of pure love for the precious metal.

The shirt in question weighs four kilos and is estimated to have cost £127,000. It has seven gold buttons has been created to move flexibly, just like any other shirt. The gold itself is 18-22 carat purity, and there have been no other metals used. It is lined with a thin cloth for added comfort, though the body of the garment is smooth.

A team of 20 people are thought to have spent 3,200 hours crafting the shirt.

With his special shirt, which he says is made of pure 18-22 carat gold, Mr Parakh hopes to enter the record books (EPA)

Mr Parakh, who left school without any qualifications, lives outside of Mumbai in the town of Yeola, and is hoping that his creation will get him into the Guinness Book of World Records and the Limca Book of Records, the Times of India reports.

It may weigh more than the 3.3kg gold shirt bought by Datta Phuge last year, but it certainly doesn't break the record for most expensive. Mr Phuge's shirt reportedly cost a quarter of a million dollars, which, when he bought it last year, was the equivalent of £160,000.

He will flaunt the shirt on Friday at a special function to celebrate his birthday.

"Gold always fascinated me since I was five years old and studying in school. Over the years, I have become passionate about this royal metal." Mr Parakh said.

"Yet, for my marriage 23 years ago, many guests considered me an embarrassment as I sported more gold than the bride," he recalled.

Some locals have told Mr Parakh that he flashes his wealth, while others feel that he is "poking fun" at people’s poverty, but the businessman is unperturbed.

"My family is hardly impressed or interested in my love for gold. They just ignore and accept it as a part of domestic life. But the rest of my extended family thinks I am weird," he said.

But Mr Parakh, despite his love of flaunting his gold wares. He has funded 120 polio operations over the past five years and last year spent a week volunteering to help those afflicted.

"I spend at least a week each year to offer voluntary services at the 1,000-bedded hospital, the biggest and best for polio treatment in India. I also arrange for any requirements of the poor patients like food, medicines, surgery and blankets, from which I get immense satisfaction," he said.