Sometime back, Show Stopper director-producer Manish Harishankar accused actor Digangana Suryavanshi of making false promises and taking money from the team. Now, the actor has reacted to it by taking legal action against the makers of the web show.

Digangana has sent a defamation notice to director Manish Harishankar and filed a police complaint against him under IPC section 420, 406, 509, 499, 500, 503, 506, 63, 199, 211.

Legal route

Digangana has rubbished the allegations levelled against her by Manish, the producer and director of the web show Show Stopper. Manish had earlier accused Digangana with “extortion” and “criminal breach of trust”.

MH Films, the production house behind the show, had filed a police complaint against Digangana, alleging cheating and criminal breach of trust under IPC Section 420 and Section 406. According to the complaint, Digangana falsely claimed to secure actor Akshay Kumar and his company as presenters for the project.

Digangana speaks up

Talking about the claims, Digangana said, "Manish’s narrative is his twisted imagination, it’s all 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".

Her lawyer hits back 

Her lawyer claims that Digangana had gotten “Akshay Kumar’s approval to come on board as a presenter for showstopper under a business deal which Manish could not honour after committing”.

“We would like to officially quote that all the allegations made against our client Digangana are absolutely baseless and an outcome of someone’s criminal intention and trying to cover up their own shortcomings. Our client has known Manish for 7 years and 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,” said Digangana's lawyer Rajendra Mishra.

Rajendra added, “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 gotten a presenter on board, and honoured her side of the commitment”.

The lawyer also stated that the 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’ll make all creative changes to presenters satisfaction”.

“Which is when our client further requested the presenter and after re-editing the show (for which our client invested 4 days at the edit suit) the presenter watched the episodes and agreed to present the show, although a lot of changes were still required, but Manish promised to fix them after their agreement,” he said.

The actor's legal team claims that Manish was given a rough draft contract as confirmation of the deal, which had to undergo many changes.

“Manish committed payment timeline and failed the timelines trice! Our client along the way realised that Manish had issues in the money to honour the deal, his financier had asked him to provide NOC or contracts of 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."

Talking about the accusation that Digangana took money from the producers, the lawyer said, “Our client 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, presenter and presenter’s team. Any claims otherwise are simply made with the intention to malign our clients reputation,” he said, adding, “Manish has spread false quotes in the name of our client, tarnished her reputation, made false claims in the media, leaked a business deal proposal, signed a false MOU with a commitment of having money when there was none, cheated by not returning/cancelling the MOU he has , didn’t pay our client’s actors fee yet while he falsely claims that he has, in fact our clients staff hasn’t been paid, defamed our client, leaked out clients home address, trapped her in a situation voluntarily”.

Controversy around the show

Recently, there were reports indicating that Zeenat Aman’s OTT debut project has hit a roadblock and paused because of financial issues, with some reports claiming that investors have not got their payment back.

Some insiders claimed that the actors and the support staff are yet to receive their payments. “Only a percentage of their amount was paid by the producer. Besides the actors, many people from the crew have complained about this,”

Earlier this month, MH Films had also issued a defamation notice to actor Rakesh Bedi and Digangana's fashion designer Krishan Parmar.

They have been accused of making false public statements about the show maker's unwillingness to collaborate, which allegedly damaged the project's reputation. As per the complaint, they also “misled the media by stating that the project was shelved and payments were withheld

The series, shot across Bhopal, Indore and Mumbai, is based on the subject of bra fittings and how almost 80 percent of women in the world end up wearing the wrong sized bra for the entire duration of their life, which leads to serious health concerns. The show also stars Zarina Wahab, Shweta Tiwari and Sourabh Raaj Jain.

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