John Abraham won the bitterly contested ‘Battle of Parmanu’ in the Bombay High Court today. And KriArj Entertainment, supposed to be a co-producer in the film with the actor’s production company JA Entertainment, has been thrown out. The truth will always prevail; in life as on the Bollywood screen. Justice has been done. And seen to be done. Now John will release Parmanu on May 25, along with Zee Studios and Pooja Entertainment & Films of producer Vashu Bhagnani. The first step in this direction is the theatrical release of the trailer of this much-anticipated and delayed film tomorrow (May 11) afternoon at 3 pm at PVR ECX Citi Mall, Andheri West.
Justice Shahrukh Kathawalla, whose courtroom sat specially today to take up the Parmanu case, has kept Prerna Arora and Arjun N. Kapoor of KriArj out of the film on India’s nuclear tests of May 1998 because they breached in payments to John after misrepresenting the court to believe they were settling all differences with the actor-producer according to an undertaking given in court. The consent terms to this effect were filed today in court by JA Entertainment, Zee Studios, and Pooja Entertainment & Films.
As a spinoff of the badly soured Parmanu deal, the court ordered the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police’s Crime Branch to proceed with all the criminal complaints that have been filed against KriArj. It is believed that all Prerna’s and Arjun’s moveable and immovable properties will also be seized by the EOW as part of the investigation and criminal proceedings against Bollywood’s mercurial but tainted producer duo.
And hammering another nail into the KriArj coffin is the court’s direction to Prerna, Arjun and her mother (a signatory on all their deals) not to leave the country until May 22. They have been ordered to remain present in court on that day. It is likely that the cases of other financiers and producers who have reportedly invested money in KriArj or Parmanu will be taken up for the order that day. Parmanu: The Story of Pokhran, directed by Abhishek Sharma and starring John Abraham, Diana Penty, and Boman Irani, is based on the nuclear bomb tests conducted by the Indian Army at Pokhran on May 11, 1998.