Television actress Digangana Suryavanshi has taken the legal route against the makers of the series 'Showstopper', for accusing her of ‘extorting money’ from producers.
As per a report in Hindustan Times, Digangana has sent a defamation notice to director and producer Manish Harishankar and filed a police complaint against him under IPC sections 420, 406, 509, 499, 500, 503, 506, 63, 199, 211.
For the unversed, Manish had earlier accused the actress of “extortion” and “criminal breach of trust”. MH Films, the production house of 'Show Stopper', had also filed a police complaint against Digangana. Manish had accused Digangana of making false promises and taking money from the team. Digangana has refuted the allegations against her.
Digangana said that Manish’s narrative is his ''twisted imagination and called it ''untrue''. ''A cheap publicity stunt of simply dragging names, clearly he’s trying to find a bakra so he can bail out from not being able to sell the show even after more than two years. I don’t want to waste any more time explaining further, I’ve already wasted too much time trying to help him", she said.
Digangana's lawyer, Rajendra Mishra also issued a statement where said that Digangana got Akshay Kumar’s approval to come on board as a presenter for 'Showstopper' under a business deal with Manish. He also said that all the allegations made against his client are ''absolutely baseless and an outcome of someone’s criminal intention and trying to cover up their own shortcomings''. It also stated that Digangana has known Manish for seven years and she is an actress on his series ‘Showstopper’. ''When Manish was in a situation where he clearly couldn’t help himself, he asked for help from our client and proposed a business deal where his team had executed an MOU between him and our client. Strangely, Manish Harishankar doesn't understand that extortion doesn't happen in legal binding; it's called business, under the terms of the MOU. Our client had got a presenter on board, and honoured her side of the commitment,'' read the statement.
It further stated, "Our client got the episodes viewed by the presenter. The episodes weren’t liked by the presenter, but then Manish proposed to our client that he'd make all the creative changes to the presenter’s satisfaction. Which is when our client further requested the presenter and after re-editing the show (for which our client invested 4 days in the edit suit) the presenter watched the episodes and agreed to present the show, although a lot of changes were still required, Manish promised to fix them after their agreement. Manish was given a rough draft contract as confirmation of the deal. The draft had to undergo many changes which were already informed to Manish.”
“Manish committed payment timeline and failed the timelines thrice! Our client along the way realised that Manish had issues with the money to honour the deal. His financier had asked him to provide NOC or contracts for all the other financiers if he needed any more funding, and Manish could not provide that to his financier, which is why no money was released, and the deal was called off.”
The lawyer further said in the statement, "Our client (Digangana) hasn’t taken a single penny from Manish for the presenter deal. He claimed that our client had only travelled with his editor, again false. Our client had travelled with her mother and Manish’s editor. The episodes were viewed in the presence of our client, her mom, the presenter and the presenter’s team. Any claims otherwise are simply made with the intention of maligning our client's reputation.”
