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Some time ago, Show Stopper director-producer Manish Harishankar had accused actress Digangana Suryavanshi of making false promises and taking money from the team. Now, the actor has reacted to this by taking legal action against the makers of the web show. (Also Read: Complaint filed against Digangana Suryavanshi for trying to ‘extort money’ from show makers)
Digangana has sent a defamation notice to director Manish Harishankar and filed a police complaint against him under sections 420, 406, 509, 499, 500, 503, 506, 63, 199, 211 of the IPC.
Legal way
Digangana has rejected the allegations levelled against her by Maniesh, the producer and director of the web show Show Stopper. Maniesh had earlier accused Digangana of “extortion” and “criminal breach of trust”.
MH Films, the production house behind the show, had filed a police complaint against Digangana accusing her of cheating and criminal breach of trust under Section 420 and Section 406 of the IPC. According to the complaint, Digangana falsely claimed to have secured actor Akshay Kumar and his company as presenters for the project.
Digangana said
Talking about the claims, Digangana said, “Manish’s story is his twisted imagination, it’s all a lie. Just a cheap publicity stunt to drag names, clearly he is trying to find a scapegoat so that he can escape from not being able to sell the show even after more than two years. I don’t want to waste any more time, I have already wasted so much time trying to help him”.
His lawyer countersued
Her lawyer claims that Digangana had “obtained Akshay Kumar’s approval to appear as a showstopper as part of a business deal which Manish could not fulfil.”
“We would like to officially state that all the allegations levelled against our client Digangana are completely baseless and are a result of someone’s criminal intent and trying to hide their own shortcomings. Our client knows Manish for 7 years and is an actress in his series “Showstopper”. When Manish was in a situation where he could not help himself, he sought help from our client and proposed a business deal where his team executed an MOU between him and our client,” said Digangana’s lawyer Rajendra Mishra.
Rajendra said, “It is strange that Manish Harishankar does not understand that extortion is not legal; it is business. Under the terms of the MoU. Our client had engaged a presenter, and honoured its commitment.”
The lawyer also said that the client “showed the episodes to the presenter, the presenter did not like the episodes but then Manish proposed to our client that he would make all the creative changes to the satisfaction of the presenter”.
He added, “Our client then requested the presenter again and after re-editing the show (for which our client spent 4 days at the editing suite) the presenter saw the episodes and agreed to present the show, though a lot of changes were still required but Manish promised to fix them after getting his consent.”
The actor’s legal team claims that Manish was given a rough draft contract to confirm the deal, which had to be changed several times.
“Manish promised to make the payment within the deadline and missed the deadline three times! During this time our client realised that Manish lacked the funds to complete the deal, his financier had asked him to provide NOCs or contracts of all other financiers if he needed more funding, and Manish could not provide this to his financier, due to which no money was released and the deal was cancelled.”
Talking about the allegation of Digangana taking money from the producers, the lawyer said, “Our client has not taken a single penny from Manish for the presentation deal. They claimed that our client travelled only with her editor, this too is a lie, our client travelled with her mother and Manish’s editor.”
They said, “These episodes were viewed in the presence of our client, her mother, the presenter and the presenter’s team. Any claims beyond this are made with the sole intent to harm our client’s reputation.” They further added, “Manish has made false statements in our client’s name, damaged her reputation, made false claims in the media, leaked a business deal proposal, signed a false MOU with a commitment of having money when he did not have any, cheated by not returning/cancelling the MOU he had, not paid our client’s actors’ fees when he falsely claims he has paid, in fact our client’s employees have not been paid, defamed our client, leaked the client’s home address, voluntarily implicated her in this situation.”
Controversy over the show
Recently, there were reports that Zeenat Aman’s OTT debut project has been stalled due to financial problems, with some reports claiming that investors have not received their payments back.
Some insiders claimed that the actors and supporting staff are yet to receive their payments. A source had earlier told Hindustan Times, “Only one per cent of their amount was paid by the producer. Apart from the actors, many from the crew have complained about this.”
Earlier this month, MH Films had also issued defamation notices to actor Rakesh Bedi and Digangana’s fashion designer Krishan Parmar.
He has been accused of making false public statements about the show maker’s unwillingness to cooperate, which allegedly damaged the reputation of the project. According to the complaint, he “misled the media by saying that the project has been put on hold and payments have been stopped
Shot in Bhopal, Indore and Mumbai, the series is based on the topic of bra fitting and highlights how almost 80 per cent of women in the world wear the wrong size of bra throughout their lives, leading to serious health issues. The show also stars Zarina Wahab, Shweta Tiwari and Saurabh Raj Jain.
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