Actor Vishal Krishna Reddy on Friday told the Madras High Court that he had absolutely no assets at all to disclose to the court and he had suffered huge losses in the film industry. The submission was made during the hearing of a civil suit filed against him by Lyca Productions to recover a 2019 loan of ₹21.29 crore with interest.
Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy had summoned the actor following an application moved by the production firm, through its counsel V. Raghavachari, for punishing him because he had not complied with an interim order passed by the court on March 8 to deposit ₹15 crore to the credit of the civil suit until it gets disposed of.
After obtaining excuse from personal appearance twice on the ground that he was injured during a film shooting, the actor appeared on Friday. When the judge asked him why he did not comply with the March 8 order, he replied that an appeal had been preferred against that order and therefore he had not made a fixed deposit for ₹15 crore.
The judge said that he had given enough time to pursue the appeal and obtain a stay of the order. However, when no such stay had been obtained, the actor must deposit the money at the earliest, he added. The actor claimed that he had no money to deposit and that he was now acting in movies without any remuneration.
He also said that he had lost ₹18 crore in just one day because of non sale of Over the Top (OTT) platform rights for one of his movies. Stating that he sold the rights for a subsequent movie for ₹17 crore, he said the money was used to settle the losses suffered because of the failure to sell the rights of the earlier movie.
The actor also claimed that Lyca owed him ₹7 crore towards the Goods and Services Tax (GST) and his GST registration number was blocked because of such non-payment. Stating that the registration was highly essential to continue his film business since he had to sell the rights of his movies, he said the production firm had ruined his career.
Taking strong exception to such a statement, Mr. Raghavachari said his client had actually saved the actor’s career by taking over the loan amount which he had owed to Anbuchezhian of Gopuram Films. “He is saying that we ruined his career but the truth is that we saved his career and he is now refusing to discharge his obligations,” counsel retorted.
When the judge wanted to know whether Mr. Vishal was trying to tell the court that he had wound up his acting career forever and he had no means of securing the claim of the production of the firm, the actor replied in the negative and said that he was certainly continuing to act in movies and trying to come out of the financial mess.
In such a case, it was up to the actor to come up with a viable plan to secure the claim amount in the civil suit, the judge said and directed the actor to file by September 9 an affidavit listing the assets owned by him and a plan to give some guarantee for the claim. If the actor had no assets, such an assertion should be made by way of an affidavit, he clarified.
