The Supreme Court on Tuesday said actor Rajinikanth’s wife Latha Rajinikanth will have to face criminal proceedings for not paying Rs 6.2 crore to Ad Bureau, a private company that financed the 2014 film Kochadaiiyaan. The top court said the trial will start once investigations are made into the case and a chargesheet has been filed, reported NDTV.
Ad Bureau has alleged that it lent Media One Global Entertainment, one of the producers of Kochadaiiyaan, Rs 10 crore in April 2014 when the movie was running short of funds during post production. It said that Latha Rajinikanth, the director of the firm, signed on as a guarantor for the loan, and that her company still owed it Rs 6.2 crore. Ad Bureau Advertising Pvt Ltd had also alleged in 2015 that Latha Rajinikanth illegally sold the rights of the movie Kochadaiiyaan to an entertainment company by producing fake documents in court.
The court’s order came on a plea filed by the advertising agency against a 2016 Karnataka High Court order that had quashed proceedings against Latha Rajinikanth. The bench, headed by Justice Ranjan Gogoi, said the High Court was “not justified” in quashing the proceedings. “This is a case which should have gone for trial,” said the court, according to PTI. “You [Latha Rajinikanth] can apply for discharge at an appropriate stage.”
In February, the top court had ordered Media One Global Entertainment to pay the amount to Ad Bureau within 12 weeks. Her lawyer had given an undertaking to the court that if her company failed to make the payment in time, Latha Rajinikanth would compensate the advertising firm herself.
On July 3, the Supreme Court pulled her up for defying its earlier order. In response, Latha Rajinikanth’s counsel said that her previous lawyer had wrongly given the undertaking.
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