Kannada Director-teen star kiss pic kicks up row

Kannada Director-teen star kiss pic kicks up row

Mangalore Today

Bangalore, June 10, 2010: A photo of movie director Ratnaja and young sensation Amulya smooching is making the rounds. Ratnaja says it’s all fake, but industry insiders are talking about a producer bailing him out from the clutches of a blackmailer.

 

The Kannada film ndustry is all agog after a photo showing director Ratnaja allegedly kissing teenage actress Amulya appeared in its midst.

Ratnaja (who directed two hits, Nenapirali and Premism) says a man who identified himself as Vijaya Krishna tried to blackmail him with the photo.

The director says he received a call on May 14, at 1 pm, with a demand for money. “He asked me for my email ID. I did not respond to him. I warned him that if he called again I would file a police complaint. He called once more and I told my advocate,” Ratnaja said.

Vijaya Krishna allegedly did not respond to the advocate’s calls and text messages. “Two days ago, my associate called to say that a photo was doing the rounds. I did not complain earlier because the actress would also be put to trouble for the act of some pervert,” Ratnaja told Bangalore Mirror over the phone.

Some say the photos were found on a mobile phone purchased in a second-hand market. The mobile phone is said to be Ratnaja’s, which he had lost during the shooting of the film Premism in Mysore. Amulya played the female lead in this film, released earlier this year. Another story doing the rounds is that a producer is bailing out Ratnaja by buying out all the pics and the footage.

Amulya became a sensation after her first film as heroine, Cheluvina Chittara, became a mass hit in 2007.

She was studying in the ninth standard then. She has acted in one film a year after that.

Film circles are agog with gossip. Some say many such photos were taken during the shooting of Premism in Belgaum. A total of nine photographs and a video are said to have been recorded in the mobile phone of Ratnaja in September 2009.

The director is said to have later lost his mobile phone. The phone surfaced in a second hand market in Bangalore and the person who purchased it found the pictures and video.

TRAIL OF BLACKMAIL
Though the identity of the person who found the pictures in the mobile is not known, he is said to have blackmailed Ratnaja demanding Rs 3 lakh from him.

When Ratnaja refused, the person is said to have approached people in the media trying to sell the photos and video. When this demand was not met, the blackmailer passed on a single photo to some people and reduced his demand to Rs 50,000 for all the pictures and video.

SEX VIDEO?
Though the single photograph that is out in the open shows two people, whose resemblance to Amulya and Ratnaja is unmistakable, just kissing on the lips, the other pics are said to be of the actress in the nude. The video is alleged to be of the two having sex.

Ratnaja was engaged to be married last November to the sister-in-law of a well-known film editor. But he broke off the engagement, leading to speculation.


Courtesy: S Shyam Prasad & H Mahesh / Bangalore Mirror