SASCHA WIL­SON

The con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the Raj so­ca chut­ney song by Ken­neth Su­per­sad has tak­en an­oth­er twist. The es­tranged wife of a man called Raj who was the fo­cus of a wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed so­cial me­dia video a few months ago is threat­en­ing to sue him for slan­der if he does not pub­licly apol­o­gise to her.

In a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter sent yes­ter­day, the woman’s at­tor­ney Saira Lakhan said her client was de­famed when Raj sug­gest­ed in a le­gal let­ter to Su­per­sad that she was a dis­hon­est and ma­li­cious per­son.

The man’s at­tor­ney, Wendy Ram­nath-Pan­day, wrote to Su­per­sad threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion if he con­tin­ues to per­form De Raj Sto­ry. Ram­nath-Pan­day said the con­tent of the video form part of di­vorce pro­ceed­ings. It shows a a woman con­fronting her al­leged cheat­ing hus­band named Raj, who is with an­oth­er woman in a van.

Su­per­sad has been ad­vised by his at­tor­neys to dis­re­gard the let­ter from Ram­nath-Pan­day as his song did not specif­i­cal­ly re­fer to her client as the per­son in the video. Su­per­sad claims the Raj in his song is a fic­tion­al char­ac­ter.

Lakhan, in her let­ter to Raj’s at­tor­ney, said her client did not post the video which sur­faced af­ter she had made sev­er­al at­tempts to sal­vage the mar­riage fol­low­ing an al­leged ex­tra mar­i­tal af­fair. How­ev­er, she said her client re­grets the pub­lic­i­ty which has stemmed from it.

“Fur­ther, your client al­so pub­licly slan­dered my client when he stat­ed through your pub­li­cized let­ter that there were sev­er­al mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and mis­lead­ing state­ments in the video.

The con­tents of your let­ter pur­ports that my client is ma­li­cious, a liar and/or a dis­hon­est per­son when one ex­am­ines the or­di­nary and nat­ur­al mean­ing of the words you used to de­scribe my client’s con­duct and your client’s pur­port­ed in­jury to his rep­u­ta­tion.”

She said Raj’s “slan­der­ous com­ments have caused se­ri­ous and ir­repara­ble dam­age” to her client’s rep­u­ta­tion and caused her fur­ther trau­ma and em­bar­rass­ment.

Lakhan said her client de­nies all state­ments in the let­ter re­lat­ing to her pur­port­ed­ly dis­hon­est and ma­li­cious be­hav­iour.

“In the premis­es, I am in­struct­ed to for­mal­ly call on your client to with­draw the state­ments made in your let­ter and to pub­licly apol­o­gise to my client for the state­ments made per­tain­ing to my client by Mon­day 15th Jan­u­ary, 2018, and to im­me­di­ate­ly cease and de­sist from mak­ing any fur­ther defam­a­to­ry state­ments/com­ments/re­marks about my client.”

If there is no re­sponse in 14 days, Lakhan said le­gal pro­ceed­ings will com­mence. Lakhan has served no­tice that they in­tend to add the woman Raj was al­leged­ly hav­ing an af­fair with as a re­spon­dent to the mat­ri­mo­ni­al pro­ceed­ings and to seek re­im­burse­ment for ex­ten­sive coun­selling ses­sions and treat­ment for emo­tion­al dis­tress.