Merchant was producing film highlighting dark phase of Chopra’s life
By Tathagata Mitra
BANGALORE: Priyanka Chopra has sent a legal notice to her ex-boyfriend Aseem Merchant for producing a documentary on her former manager Prakash Jaju. The said film highlighted a dark phase of Chopra’s life, something that this leading lady of Bollywood obviously didn’t want.
Chopra feels that the film is an infringement of her privacy rights. She was quoted as saying, “It upsets me that people are glorifying painful part of my life.” A copy of the legal notice has been sent to Jaju as well.
To go back in time, at one point Priyanka allegedly owed Jaju a lot of money which she refused to pay. Following that Jaju had started threatening Priyanka and her family. Priyanka’s father filed an FIR against Jaju, for which he was arrested and jailed for 67 days. Funnily enough, Aseem’s film is titled ’67 Days’.
Jaju was the man responsible for Priyanka’s rise in her early years. Then in 2004, after a four-year long partnership, Priyanka had suddenly decided to call it quits with her first manager.
In an interview back in October, 2004 Jaju had said, “My contract with her states she has to give me six months’ notice before relieving me of my work. She suddenly sent off an SMS to everyone saying my services had been terminated.”
The notice sent by Priyanka’s lawyer stated, “Our client is shocked to note that while all the news articles mention the proposed film as your (Jaju’s) biopic, the promotions largely refer to our client and inclusion of aspects of her and her family life rather than references to you. You are intending to collude with Mr. Merchant in violation of our client’s rights, including right to privacy, defaming our client and lowering her reputation, seeking to subject her to hatred and ridicule. Our client calls upon you to withdraw all the publicity material of the film with immediate effect, desist using or referring to any personal or confidential information about her and/ or her family, desist from producing, releasing the proposed film and tender an unconditional apology to her.”
Merchant and Jaju, however, still maintain that the biopic mostly concerns with Jaju’s life and Priyanka is just a small part of it.