Madras HC stays Kanguva release; directs Gnanavel Raja to settle Rs 20 cr due to assignee

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court issued an order restraining Studio Green from releasing Suriya Sivakumar starring Kanguva unless the production firm paid Rs 20 crore to the official assignee appointed by the court.

A division bench of Justice G Jayachandran and Justice CV Karthikeyan directed KE Gnanavel Raja representing Studio Green to pay the decreed amount before November 13 to release Kanguva on the scheduled date.

Claiming that Gnanavel Raja didn’t pay the Rs 1 crore ordered by the court, the official assignee moved an application to reconsider the bench’s order allowing Studio Green to release Kanguva by paying the amount fixed.

During the hearing, the counsel for Studio Green submitted that Rs 1 crore which was paid a few minutes ago was accepted by the applicant.

The counsel for the assignee submitted that the respondent KE Gnanavel Raja is manipulating the court by creating an image that he doesn’t have money to deposit the decree amount, whereas, he deposited Rs 100 crore to Reliance Entertainment in another suit filed against him. Gnanavel Raja settled the decreed property to walk free from the case and in favour of his wife, he contended.

The counsel for Studio Green, Niranjan Rajagopalan, submitted that everyone including the applicant would suffer if the release of the film was stopped as there would be revenue loss and the party would not be able to pay the decree amount.

Objecting to the submission, the counsel for the assignee submitted that the respondent has been dragging the issue for the past five years and with favourable court orders somehow managed to release other films under Studio Green and continues delaying payment of the decree amount.

The court had assigned the official assignee to recover the debts due to Arjunlal Sunderdas (since dead). Arjunlal Sunderdas was accused of cheating investors of several crores of money by luring them to invest in his finance, real estate, and other companies.

He decided to produce a film in association with Gnanavel Raja by investing Rs 40 crore and it was alleged that, between 2011 and 2012, Arjunlal paid more than Rs 12 crore. However, he backed off from the project midway due to the financial crunch. The production house was unable to repay Arjunlal as it invested all the money into the film project.

In the meantime, Arjunlal was announced as an insolvent businessman, and the film production house repaid Rs 2 crore to him. The official assignee moved the High Court to direct the production house to repay the balance of Rs 10 crore with 18 per cent annual interest from 2013.

However, Gnanavel Raja objected to this and claimed that he had given Hindi remake rights of three of his Tamil films to Arjunlal for his investments.

In 2019, a division bench allowed the application of the official assignee and directed Gnanavel Raja to deposit Rs 10.35 crore with interest.

Since the order was not complied with, the official assignee has now moved another application to attach all the future films of Studio Green including Kanguva.