Vickey Lalwani (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 14, 2014)

Sangeeth Sivan’s next, titled Fools, has landed in a controversy and that too of his own making. Sivan had zeroed in on the cast —Arshad Warsi, Tusshar Kapoor and Kunal Kemmu—but the film, to be produced by Anuj Sharma (Anil Gaddar Sharma’s brother), is unlikely to take off on schedule. Last evening, Arshad pulled out from the film and the chain of events that led to his exit revolves around T P Aggarwal.

 The producer had signed Sangeeth to direct a film by the same name (Fools) that was to star Sanjay Dutt and Arshad. Both the projects also share a scriptwriter, Pankaj Trivedi. Aggarwal claims to have paid Rs 1 crore to Sanjay, Rs 50 lakh to Arshad and Rs 16 lakh to Sangeeth, before discovering that his film has got a twin.

 When Mirror contacted Sangeeth on Saturday to get to the bottom of the ‘foolish’ mixup, he said, “Fools is just a working title, we will change that. Anuj and I are not making the same film that TP Agarwal and I were supposed to make. Arshad heads the cast of Anuj's film."

 Little did Sangeeth know that his happiness was short-lived as on Sunday afternoon, Arshad walked out of his film. Arshad’s secretary Bhola called up Aggarwal to reassure him of Arshad's stance.

 When contacted, Aggarwal said, “How can Sangeeth make a film written by Pankaj with three characters, one of them being Arshad? That Sanjay couldn’t do it because of his legal troubles is a different story. But I had written to Arshad about my payment and I'm glad he is not doing the film. Meanwhile IMPPA has sent a notice to Sangeeth to return my Rs 16 lakh.”