Actor Kangana Ranaut has sent a legal notice to the Entertainment Journalists’ Guild of India and the Press Club of India for supporting PTI journalist Justin Rao, after the two had a spat in public during the promotion of the film Judgementall Hai Kya, and the Guild decided to boycott her.
The notice was titled, ‘Your wrongful, immoral, unethical and illegal acts of lending support to a Journalist named Mr Justin Rao, who is not only accused of indulging in unprofessional and illegal activities by intentionally violating norms of Journalistic Conduct and various other provisions of the Press Council of India Act, 1978 by openly ridiculing, insulting, annoying, criminally intimidating and defaming my client Ms. Kangana Ranaut but is also guilty and liable to be tried under various provisions of Indian Penal Code.’
The legal notice states that the Entertainment Journalists’ Guild and the Press Club have “jointly and severally have illegally formed a “cartel” and are mischievously not only seeking to openly encourage Journalist/s in ridiculing, insulting, annoying, criminally intimidating and defaming my client Ms. Kangana Ranaut, but are also using force and threats (of enforcing an illegal ban on her as an Artist in her trade as a Hindi Film Heroine) and to make my client surrender to such criminal acts, and thereby seek an apology which prima facie also amounts to “criminal extortion”.”
According to the notice, the Entertainment Journalists’ Guild does not have legal standing as a registered body and the Press Club is a meeting point for journalists. The notice gave the organisations 24 hours to “rectify all wrong so committed”, and said that Kangana will be taking action otherwise.
This comes after members of the Entertainment Journalists' Guild of India (EJGI) collectively decided to boycott Kangana Ranaut and demanded a public apology for the spat between her and Justin Rao.
"We, the members of Entertainment Journalists' Guild of India, demand a written public statement from you, Balaji Films and Ms Ranaut, condemning the incident and in particular Ms Ranaut's behaviour. We as a guild, collectively decided to boycott Ms Ranaut and give any media coverage,” they said. The Entertainment Journalists' Guild was formed in the light of the incident that happened with the reporter on July 7. It is yet to be registered.
On Saturday, the Press Club of India said that they support the boycott by the Entertainment Journalists’ Guild. "We the Press Club of India are aghast, anguished and shocked at the incident involving an actress of Bollywood using uncivilised, uncultured, filthy and abusive language against the media persons. We condemn it in the strongest possible words. This behaviour and hurling abuses towards journalists is unacceptable,” they said.
With IANS inputs