A while back, News18 Showsha had exclusively reported that Show Stopper director-producer Manish Harishankar had filed a police report against actor Digangana Suryavanshi alleging cheating and criminal breach of trust under IPC Section 420 and Section 406. The complaint asserts that she falsely claimed to secure Akshay Kumar and his company as presenters for the project.
And now a source exclusively tells us that Harishankar is reportedly making false accusations against cast members to shift the focus from the financial soup the series that marks Zeenat Aman’s comeback is in and that the claims against Suryavanshi is ‘absolutely baseless’.
“Manish Harishankar is going out and putting false accusations against Show Stopper actors Digangana Suryavanshi, Rakesh Bedi, Ashmit Joshi because he doesn’t want to return money to the financiers as the show has been stuck for two years and Manish Harishankar has not been able to sell the show. This is the first time he’s working after seven years. FIR means first information report – which does not mean that whatever is written in the report is true – actors have all proofs against Manish Harishankar,” reveals the source.
For the unversed, Harishankar’s MH Films issued a defamation notice to actor Rakesh Bedi and Suryavanshi’s fashion designer, Krishan Parmar and they’ve been accused of making false public statements about OTT platforms’ unwillingness to collaborate, which allegedly damaged the project’s reputation. And as per the police report, Harishankar claimed that Suryavanshi also demanded about six crores from the production house stating that this amount has to be paid to Kumar ‘as full final payment towards naming being used in the series as a presenter’.
Reacting to this, the source states, “Forget the 6 crores that Manish Harishankar claims, he has not paid a single penny to Digangana! And he’s making cheating claims. Cheating happens only after a person takes money from another and doesn’t keep the commitment. The deal that Manish Harishankar is trying to project is all wrong.”
The source adds, “Manish Harishankar is the fraud here, who had lent money from people to make the show Show Stopper and has not been able to sell it ever after two years. Now he’s finding ways to bail out and that’s why unnecessarily accusing actors. In fact, Manish Harishankar has not filed Digangana’s TDS money to the government.”
Show Stopper which was announced in January 2022 has been embroiled in an array of controversies – right from the production being stalled due to severe budget overruns to Harishankar’s alleged failure to manage finances responsibly. As per reports, none of the investors have seen any return on their investment after two years, and many daily wage workers, including hair and makeup artists and stylists, have gone unpaid for over a year.
But junking these reports as ‘baseless’, Harishankar had earlier told us, “I just want to state on record that all the speculations and rumours made about the payments are not true. In fact, we have hundred percent cleared the lead actors’ payments and the production’s payments are also clear by 90-95 percent. We have just finished dubbing with all the actors and the post-production is also going on in full swing currently. We will make the date of announcement. We are going to join hands with soon with some good association.”
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