CHENNAI: By all counts, 2014-15 can easily be considered as the worst year of southern superstar Rajinikanth’s life. The 63-year-old star amidst many controversies is also fighting back a controversial cheating allegation levelled against his family. Promoted effusively as a fair, well-principled man who had no earthly affection for wealth, the case has dented the family’s reputation badly, as the accuser continues to badger them publicly for the money they ‘owe’ him.
Returning to acting after a four-year layoff, prompted by his near brush with death, Rajinikanth had two big releases last year—Kochadaiiyaan and Lingaa. Shot by his younger daughter Soundarya Ashwin, Kochadaiiyaan was promoted as a cutting-edge work of technical finesse that would revolutionise the way the world saw Indian cinema. There was even talk of an English version. Tragically, the tills at the box office didn’t ring for half as long as it took to complete that sentence. The men who fronted large sums of money closed in rather quickly.
Abirchand Nahar, the chairman of a firm called Ad Bureau, was the first to go public with these charges in November last year. Kochadaiiyaan’s producers Mediaone Global Entertainment had a criminal cheating case slapped on them. “Mediaone approached us to loan them Rs 30 crore a month before Kochadaiiyaan released last May as they needed money to release the film. We initially released Rs 10 crore, but only with the stipulation that we come on board as post-producers of the film with the distribution rights for the Bhojpuri version and so on,” Nahar explained. They would have released the rest of the cash, except they received a notice from Punjab National Bank that Mediaone was being monitored for financial irregularities.
After five delays, the film finally released. It was panned universally and sunk without a trace. At Rs 125 crore (the budget as revealed by Mediaone’s Director Dr Murali Manohar), it turned out to be an expensive experiment from the Rajini stable. In the six months that followed, four of the cheques paid to Nahar allegedly bounced, giving him the incentive to go public.
A stalemate was reached and a restraining order was slapped on Nahar by a Bengaluru court. Meanwhile, to offset the losses, Eros International had pushed the aging superstar to finish Lingaa for them and released it on his birthday, when the next thunderbolt struck. Believed to be a sure-shot blockbuster, with the formulaic one-man-wonder storyline that Rajini fans love, the film did so badly at the box office that even the producers were stunned. Sold at such a high price that a theatre owner in Chennai said that it would take, “two whole weeks of full shows to break even”, the film’s dismal performance sparked a curious backlash. Distributors and theatre owners took to the streets and trashed the film, before demanding compensation for their losses. “The movie was so bad that by the third show people who had paid for tickets had refused to show up. It was embarrassing for an actor of his stature,” said T Raja, who owns a chain of theatres in Salem.
Perhaps Rajinikanth had set a bad precedent when he paid distributors from his own, deep pockets when two of his earlier films—Baba and Kuselan—flopped. But the very tone of the distributors had been different then. Where they were hurt, almost embarrassed to beg for compensation ten years ago, this time they were brash and angry, with no sympathy or semblance of respect for the man.
With fringe politicians and lots of verbal firepower, they pounded the actor and his producer, till a settlement was reached. “After 100 days of haggling, fighting, discussing and so much accounting work, the loss suffered in Tamil Nadu was set at Rs 33.85 crore. Of this, the superstar finally paid us Rs 10 crore as compensation. It is meagre, but it is all we can get now,” said R Singaravadivelan, who distributed Lingaa in Tirunelveli and was the person organising the protest.
That’s when the Nahar issue came back to haunt him. For over five months now, the matter has gone back and forth with Nahar setting the total sum due to him at Rs 15.64 crore, of which he claims Rs 6.84 is still due. Following Nahar’s last public lashing, the superstar’s wife Latha has finally broken her silence. Her lawyer has said that they will be pursing a defamation case against Ad Bureau for “slandering her,” and said that all the cash had been paid back in full.
With what looks like a messy legal drama still to come, Rajinikanth is believed to be a perplexed man. Sources close to the actor related how he had retreated to a safe house and dealt with these issues through a small group of confidantes. “There is a commitment with a production company to do one more movie for them to offset some losses suffered. He is also believed to have signed on to do a movie for Ghajini director A R Murugadoss,” said a producer.
Promising talk. But the rot has already set in. According to Eros International’s former COO Kamal Jain, a Rajinikanth film is no longer a safe bet. “I am still not over the loss that Lingaa caused. In a situation like this, how can we be expected to buy Rajini’s film for the prices that we doled out last year? He will have to be more realistic when doing business for his next film,” said a theatre owner in the city’s suburbs, a man who has been a self-confessed Rajini fan for 27 years. C’est la vie, Rajini?