Who is the real cheat?

Court proceedings by Prernaa Arora-led production house KriArj against John Abraham over Parmanu are throwing up some interesting revelations about the history of the altercation...

Producer Prernaa Arora and actor John Abraham are in the midst of a big fight, where each has filed criminal cases against the other on charges of cheating. The case opened at the Bombay high court on Monday to some rather interesting developments.

A source present at the hearing says that some surprising revelations came from Kyta Productions, a new company led by ex-T-Series head of films, Ajay Kapoor. “It is barely known that Kyta was a co-producer on Parmanu. However, they revealed that they had paid Rs 5.5 crore to KriArj towards production of the film, information that was suppressed the latter’s complaint,” says the source. At the hearing, Kyta also announced that they were cancelling their agreement with the production house.

Prernaa Arora

Meanwhile, Zee, which was also part of the hearing, asserted that they had paid money to KriArj for various rights of the film. “Zee intervened in the matter and informed the court that they had paid `27 crore for acquiring satellite, digital and IPR in the film and this money was used by KriArj for production of the film,” says the source, adding, “It is now on record that KriArj has already pocketed more money than what they claimed to have paid for production of the film.” The matter will now be heard on Wednesday.

Interestingly, KriArj had more to deal with the same day when the shoot of their next production, Batti Gul Meter Chalu starring Shahid Kapoor was stopped after the hotel where the crew was put up decided to seize shoot-related equipment following non-payment of dues.

Quite clearly, a pattern seems to be emerging. In fact, in one of the earlier statements given out by JA Entertainment, they had stated, “The industry knows of KriArj’s track record. There has been a similar incident in the past with another film where they did the same thing.”

Turns out that film is Anushka Sharma’s recently released Pari. A source close to JA Entertainment reveals, “Karnesh Sharma, Anushka’s brother and producer of Pari, put his own money to release the film after KriArj just failed to pay up. And now John is afraid that he might have to do the same thing.”

The source adds, “JA Entertainment has been very confident of Parmanu and got rather upset when KriArj kept delaying it. Their hopes were shattered when KriArj randomly announced that Pari and Parmanu would release on the same day. And if Prernaa is allowed to have her way, the film might not get a proper release at all.”

This makes Parmanu the third KriArj film to face problems in as many months. They are already in a war with Abhishek Kapoor regarding the film Kedarnath. KriArj had moved the high court in the case of Kedarnath too, to reinforce its rights on the film after Kapoor claimed lack of transparency in financial dealings. The latest update is that Abhishek will be paying off KriArj the money it had invested and produce the film on his own.