Actor Vemal has denied reports regarding his alleged assault of Telugu actor Abhishek at a service apartment in Chennai last week. The incident had lead to a case being filed against Vemal and three of his friends under sections 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 294b (Uttering obscene language) of the IPC.
Vemal offered clarification regarding this in a recent interview, and said he had been following up on the case. Unlike what was reported, he had neither absconded after the incident, nor were the police looking for him, he said. He couldn’t respond to calls about this because was out of town for his uncle’s death.
The issue began when he went to a guest house late one night, to arrange for the stay for his friends who were visiting him. Vemal saw Abhishek sitting at the entrance and assumed he was an employee of the guest house, so he asked where the manager was. Instead of clarifying that he was a guest, Abhishek took offence to this statement which lead to a fight, he said.
“I had asked him ‘Baiyya isn’t anyone there here?’ And he charged at me for that. If he had just told me that he was a guest the problem itself wouldn’t have come up. Instead he kept berating me, and asking if I knew who he was. My friends around me also got agitated,” he said, adding that his attempts to make peace were only provoked by Abhishek.
“I could see he was drunk, and he he got angrier and asked me to ‘get up’. It is human nature to get emotional and react to this. It soon lead to a physical fight between my friends and Abhishek. Even then I was the one who tried to talk peace, and the manager also knows about this,” he said.
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Later, this was wrongly interpreted that he was at fault, and was absconding. “I know I am not at fault. So I when I was told that when I was being charged I was ready to face the issue. I am also okay to talk the issue outside court and reach an understanding,” said Vemal.
Abhishek has been staying at the service apartment in Chennai for over a month, to shoot for Avan Adhu Aval. The police recovered CCTV footage from the venue of the reported incident, and were quoted in a ToI report as saying that Vemal had arrived inebriated, and picked up a fight when Abhishek did not acknowledge who he was.