Hari Mirch…leaves Shilpa frothing

Rakesh Chowdhary, producer of DD1’s Hari Mirchi Lal Mirchi who had dragged his lead artiste Shilpa Shinde to court has received a favourable judgement from the Court. The city court passed an order restraining Shilpa Shinde from giving out the dates allocated to the producer Rakesh Chowdhary for his serial Hari Mirchi Lal Mirchi to any other producer. When Shilpa Shinde failed to comply by the court orders, the Court has ordered to attach her property for contempt of the earlier court order whereby she was restrained to work for any other producer other than 'Samvaad' during 21st to 28th of every month. Rakesh Chowdhary says, "Actors often hold the producer to ransom and put up unreasonable demands once the serial achieves success. This has been a problem for long and nobody takes any action. But I refused to be cowed down. Shilpa allotted our contracted dates of 21st to 28th of every month to her other show Maayka, we tried to reason out with her. This went on for quite some time. Then on 25th of October 2007, she sent SMS to the director Rajesh Gupta at 2.00 am in night that she will not be able to shoot for us. Naturally, Rajesh saw this in the morning and immediately called her but there was no response. After umpteen reminders, she finally picked up the call but refused to come. Eventually we had to cancel the shoot.” The producers then approached CINTA. Shilpa finally showed up on the 27th but allegedly refused to cooperate. This schedule was somehow managed, but she supposedly refused to shoot any more. So the producers went to court. She promised to cooperate if the producers apologised which was unacceptable for Rakesh. Adding further Rakesh says, “Shilpa didn’t turn up on the 22nd and 23rd of November. Her lawyers wanted an out of court settlement and asked us to increase her fee for her cooperation. But this is no way to seek more payment. On 14th December a confirmed order was passed that till the completion of the serial, she can not shoot for any body from 21st to 28th of every month." Since Shilpa flaunted the court orders and shot with others in spite of the restraint by the court, an order to attach her property and for contempt of court was passed in April 2008. On a concluding note, the producer says, "I have not done this for personal reasons. This is the beginning of something that should have been done much earlier. Actors take the producers for granted, come late for shoots, ask for increase in payments and generally do not respect the contract. The Judge saw the merits of our case, restricted her from giving the said dates to any other serial till our serial is on air and when she refused to take the court orders seriously, her property is attached by the court for contempt. And the artiste is now forced to acknowledge the contract. She has to now pay a heavy price for her unprofessional and errant behavior." Despite repeated attempts, Shilpa remained unavailable for comment.