John Abraham files criminal complaints against Prernaa Arora, KriArj Entertainment; Parmanu co-producers call allegations false

The ongoing dispute between John Abraham’s JA Entertainment and Prernaa Arora’s KriArj Entertainment has escalated to a new level. First, John Abraham  terminated the collaboration  with KriArj and announced a new date for the release of Parmanu - The Story Of Pokhran. This was followed by  John Abraham accusing KriArj  of defaulting on payments that led to delays in the movie’s release. Prernaa refuted all such claims and accused JA Entertainment of trying to evade a legally binding contract. Now, it is been reported that John Abraham has filed three criminal complaints against Prernaa Arora and KriArj Entertainment for cheating, breach of trust, defamation and offences committed under the Information Technology Act. In a press release issued by JA Entertainment, John Abraham “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”. The press release adds, “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. After this termination, which is a purely Civil Dispute, Prernaa filed a false criminal complaint against John and started making defamatory statements against him in the media. Prernaa also illegally started blocking the online publicity materials launched by John for the promotion of his film. John also came to know that Prernaa had, without his knowledge, already recovered monies in excess of what she had to pay him from various third parties and yet did not pay him his dues.” [caption id=“attachment_4422753” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  John Abraham and Prernaa Arora/Image from Twitter.[/caption] Recently, reports  of Prernaa Arora filing FIR against the actor were also doing the rounds. JA Entertainment, however, rubbished such reports in a press release saying that these are “factually incorrect and misleading”. Now, a spokesperson from Prernaa Arora’s KriArj Entertainment has issued a statement regarding the criminal complaints filed by John Abraham and JA Entertainment. The statement reads as follows:

“This in response to the various articles being circulated by JA Entertainment claiming that criminal cases have been filed against Ms Prerna Arora of KriArj Entertainment. As also clarified by us at numerous times in the past we hereby re confirm that the allegations made by JA Entertainment are false and frivolous and that it is infact JA Entertainment who is guilty of various breaches of our understanding with them including infringement of copyright and cheating / fraud which is the sole basis for our filing multiple criminal complaint/s and the copyright infringement suit against JA Entertainment before the Hon’ble Bombay High Court which is due to be listed for hearing on Monday. In addition to our earlier criminal complaint a fresh criminal complaint was also filed yesterday by KriArj against JA Entertainment and Mr John Abraham for piracy / leakage of Film materials including the poster and teaser of the Film as owned by KriArj Entertainment. As per our knowledge no case has been registered against Prerna Arora or any members of team KriArj by the Khar Police Station and it is apparent that the attempts made by JA Entertainment are nothing but an immature counterblast and an afterthought against KriArj to defame and mentally harass them and to sabotage the release and distribution of the Film by KriArj inspite of being fully aware of KriArj’s rights in the Film as Co producers, joint owners and exclusive right holders. After receiving close to 30 Crores from KriArj as and when demanded by them on a film which was to be made on a budget of Rs 22 Crores. KriArj was never given books of accounts showing the true extent of expenses done on the Film, in spite of having requested for the same. This is just one of the several breaches due to which we have sued JA Ent before the Bombay High Court. We have great respect for the judiciary. As the matter is sub judice we reserve our right to make further statements once matters are decided by Court." 

Parmanu - The Story Of Pokhran, directed by Abhishek Sharma and starring Abraham, Diana Penty and Boman Irani, is based on the nuclear tests conducted in Pokhran in 1998. Parmanu is targetting a 4 May release, and a teaser was released on Friday, but has since been taken down from all social media platforms following the growing controversy.