Jimmy Sheirgill dragged to court over financial tussle

Bollywood actor Jimmy Sheirgill is been accused by a production company of cheating them of Rs 93 lakh, after the actor took the amount for a film, but failed to turn up on set on multiple occasions. New Leaf Media Ventures PVT LTD's Ashish Chawla has claimed that in June 2012, Sheirgill had agreed to come aboard his project, Punjabi Number 1, even taking a signing amout of Rs 21 lakh. As per the contract, Sheirgill's remuneration for the film, scheduled to be completed in a year's time, was set at Rs 1 crore.

However, Chawla apparently claims that Jimmy Sheirgill failed to arrive on set at the nth minute on multiple occasions, after the unit would set up the location for filming. After two years of back-and-fro, and incurring an expense of Rs 93 lakh, he eventually asked Sheirgill to return the signing about, but did not get a response.

The company moved court in 2017, but the actor failed to turn up at the hearings, eventually being issued a summon on March 27. Advocate V Sanglikar of the company tells mid-day, "Sheirgill promised to act in a Punjabi film [and was] cast in the lead role. He cheated our client by going back on all promises, made our client [incur debts] and did not honour his acting commitment."

He added that the suit seeks to recover financial loss of R93 lakh, which is quantifiable as per documents. Sheirgill, however, refuted the claim stating, "Allegation made against me are wrong. The story of that said film is [great], I wanted to work on it. [But] there is a financial problem with company. When they demanded money from me, I agreed to return the first amount [I was given]. But, they are demanding more [money] without explaining where they spent it on." He claimed that his advocate has been attending the hearing regularly.

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