Pro Wrestling League promoters served legal notice for alleged unpaid dues

New Delhi: The promoters of Pro Wrestling League (PWL), Pro-Sportify, was on Friday embroiled in a controversy after a former ground events company alleged that it has not paid dues to the tune of over Rs 1.5 crores during the inaugural edition of the tournament.

Pro-Sportify has been served a legal notice under Section 271 of the Companies Act 2013 by Core Networks, the company that handled the ground events of the PWL season one, held from December 10 to 27, 2015.

The legal notice stated: "Core Networks were not paid their outstanding dues totalling to Rs 1,51,46,177 (Rupees One Crore Fifty One Lakhs Forty Six Thousand One Hundred and Seventy Seven only) for organising the ground events the Pro Wrestling League held from Dec 10, 2015 to Dec 27, 2015 across India in Delhi, Ludhiana, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai and Bangalore.

"Our clients have been repeatedly requesting Vishal Gurnani (pro-Sportify director), Kartikey Sharma (Promoter and Managing Director PWL) and Jignesh Patel -- office incharge since January 2016 to settle their outstanding reconciled and admitted bills/invoices," the notice served by Mumbai-based law firm R Bhargavan and Associates said.

The legal notice claimed that a formal statement has also been given by the complainant to the Goregaon Police Station, Mumbai and preliminary investigations are being initiated.

When contacted, Pro-Sportify Director Vishal Gurnani said that his company was ready to clear the dues but only for the services that were provided to them and not for those on the papers.

"We have already cleared Rs. 2 crore and whatever is left is under commercial dispute. We do owe them certain amount and we are constantly in touch with the company. We are happy to pay them but for only those services that they provided to us and not for those which were just on the papers. We are not going to pay for that," Gurnani told PTI.

"We were already in talks with them over those conflicting aspects but they chose to send us a legal notice," he added.

On what would be Pro-Sportify's next course of action, Gurnani said: "Our legal team is already studying the notice and will be responding to them."

This season, Pro-Sportify has hired another company to take care of the ground events.

Core Networks claimed that they had been "unsuccessfully" following up with Pro-Sportify since January last year.

"Fed up with the months of unkempt promises, our clients partner made it clear they were not interested in talking about the future (PWL-2) without their outstanding payment of Rs. 1,51,46,177 being cleared," the legal notice stated.

The company has given Pro-Sportify 21 days to reply to the notice.

"Under these circumstances (Core Networks) will be left with no option but to proceed with winding up proceedings in the event of the outstanding amount remains unpaid after 21 days of receipt of the notice."