Producer convicted for contempt of court
MUMBAI: The Bombay high court has convicted Bollywood producer Prernaa Arora for contempt of court and sentenced her to imprisonment for six months.
Justice GS Kulkarni on February 24 ordered Arora, who produced the movies Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and PadMan ,to surrender at the Azad Maidan police station in Mumbai before March 2 to serve the prison term. The judge also issued a non-bailable warrant for her arrest and directed the police to execute the warrant if she fails to surrender. The order was uploaded on the website of the court on Saturday.
The order came on proceedings initiated by Gothic Entertainment against KriArj Entertainment and its directors, Prernaa and Protima Arora for execution of a settlement reached before an arbitral tribunal.
Under the settlement, Arora’s production house had agreed to pay ~25 crore to Gothic, but failed to clear two instalments of over ~2.5 crore. As cheques for the instalments bounced, Gothic moved HC for execution of the settlement. Several orders were passed by different benches of the high court on Gothic’s application starting in February 2019.
Justice Kulkarni noted that the film producer did not comply with any of these orders and on November 18, 2019 gave an undertaking to pay a sum of ~3 crore to Gothic in instalments towards a full and final settlement.
On February 5, 2020, Gothic told the court that Prernaa Arora had breached the undertaking as well; the judge then issued a notice asking her why action for contempt of court should not be taken against her. She did not even bother to reply to the notice.
“This company, Gothic, was a partial investor in KriArj. The principal amount has been paid to them. There’s a pending interest amount of ~2.85 crore, which will be payed by May,” said Arora