Prakash Raj warned of contempt of court over non-payment of dues for his long-withheld film Tadka

The Bombay High Court on Friday warned actor-politician Prakash Raj of contempt of court with respect to his directorial debut, the yet-to-be-released Nana Patekar, Tapsee Pannu and Ali Fazal-starrer Tadka, reports Mumbai Mirror. [caption id=“attachment_5042961” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] File image of Prakash Raj/image from Twitter.[/caption] On Friday, Justice KR Shriram declared that if the director’s cheque worth Rs 2 crore bounces, he will be held accountable for ‘aggravated contempt of court’ now that he has been made aware of the non-payment of dues worth over Rs 5.88 crore to Zee Group’s Essel Vision. Earlier, this year in April, Raj had given an undertaking to the court confirming to pay the entire amount by mid-July. He was responding to a suit filed by Essel against the production house Movie Makers and its officials, Sameer Dixit, Jatish Verma, and Swiss Entertainment Pvt Ltd. Advocate Hiren Kamod told Mumbai Mirror after a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between the production house and Essel, half the budget of the film, Rs 4.25 crore, was paid for the film. However, Raj defaulted to pay the amount, and Essel decided to take the legal route. Essel approached the court citing ‘breach of the MoU’. It is further reported that Raj has also agreed to deposit documents of two of his personal properties, in case he could not repay the amount within the stipulated period. Moreover, Essel has now agreed to give Raj time till February to clear the balance amount. However, a hearing is scheduled for on 30 August to ascertain whether the current cheque has been cleared. On 2 August, Fazal also took to Twitter to call out the producers  for their ethical breach. A now-deleted promotional song ‘K__hainch Le Qashh’ was dropped by Zee Music Company on YouTube, amidst the ongoing court case. The same report states Fazal saw the incident as a breach of ethical conduct on part of the producers who are yet to clear payments for cast and crew but are willing to flaunt their film on social media.