Madras HC orders Gnanavel Raja to deposit ₹1 crore to release Thangalaan and Kanguva

CHENNAI: The Madras High Court directed film producer KE Gnanavel Raja's production house, Studio Green, to deposit Rs 1 crore each to release his highly expected and extravagantly produced films 'Thangalaan' and 'Kanguva' on the scheduled dates.

A division bench of Justice G Jayachandran and Justice CV Karthikeyan issued the direction to the production house to deposit Rs.1 crore to the official assignee of the High Court on August 14 as his film Thangalaan starred actor Vikram is scheduled to be released on August 15.

The bench also ordered to deposit another Rs.1 crore before the release of actor Suriya Sivakumar starrer film Kanguva.

The bench issued the direction while hearing an application moved by an official assignee of the High Court, who was assigned to recover the debts due of Arjunlal Sunderdas (since dead), announced as insolvent businessman.

Arjunlal Sunderdas was accused of cheating investors several crores of money by luring them to invest in his finance, real estate and other companies.

He also decided to produce a film in association with KE Gnanavel Raja by investing Rs.40 crore.

It was alleged that between 2011 and 2012 Arjunlal paid more than Rs.12 crores, however, due to the financial crunch he backed off from the project midway.

The production house couldn't repay Arjunlal's money 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 Rs.10 crore with 18 percent 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 now moved another application to attach all the future films of Studio Green including Thangalaan and Kanguva.