John Abraham’s Parmanu, whose recently released teaser sparked a lot of interest, seems to be headed for a bitter legal battle. John has now filed three criminal complaints against Prerna Arora of KriArj Entertainment, which was inititally co-producing the film with him.
According to Indian Express, John Abraham’s JA Entertainment recently released an official statement informing the media about the complaints.
“John Abraham, Director of M/s JA Entertainment has filed three criminal complaints against Prernaa Arora and her company, KriArj Entertainment for cheating, breach of trust, defamation and offences committed under the Information Technology Act.”John Abraham’s JA Entertainment in a statement
The statement further read, “John Abraham, through his production house JA Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. had signed a Co-production agreement with Prernaa Arora’s company Kriarj Entertaiment Pvt. Ltd. wherein Kriarj had agreed to pay Rs 35 crores to John’s company to cover the cost of production, fees of all actors and other production related expenses and had also agreed to additionally bear the Print and Advertisement expenses (P&A) for the film Parmanu- The Story of Pokhran against which John had agreed to assign the exploitation rights and 50% IPR of the film to Prernaa’s company. However, after Prernaa’s repeated delays in making payments by stopping cheque payments and giving wrong bank transfer details (UTR numbers) at every stage and refusal to pay the last tranches of payment, which were critical for completing the post-production work of the film, John followed the due process as laid down by law. He first gave a legal notice to cure the breach and after Prernaa’s failure to cure the breaches, John terminated the agreement with Prernaa in order to save his film.”
JA Entertainment also asserted in their statement Prernaa Arora illegally blocked the online publicity material of the film launched by John and that she has already recovered monies in excess of what she had to pay him from various third parties. She did not yet pay John his dues.
JA Entertainment has also refuted recent media reports of Prernaa Arora filing an FIR against John Abraham for cheating etc. The release also said:
“This is with reference to the media reports stating that an FIR (First Information Report) has been registered at the Khar Police Station against Mr John Abraham and his production house, JA Entertainment. We would like to categorically state that this statement is factually incorrect and misleading.”
Parmanu stars John Abraham alongside Diana Penty and Boman Irani and is set to release on 4 May.
(Source: Indian Express)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)