JOIN USChetan Bhagat’s latest book “Half Girlfriend” has irked the erstwhile royal family of Dumraon, which alleged that the book portrayed them in a bad light and threatened to slap a defamation suit against the author and the publisher.
The erstwhile royals, including 88-year-old Maharaja Bahadur Kamal Singh and Yuvraj Chandra Vijay Singh, accused Bhagat of denigrating their family. “Our lawyer is sending notice to the author and publisher of “Half Girlfriend” demanding a public apology. If they do not oblige, we will be filing a defamation suit against them,” Chandra Vijay Singh said.
They would also ask the writer and publisher to withdraw the book from the market, remove the name of the royal family from it and ensure that the “mistakes” were not repeated if a film was made from the book. Half Girlfriend, is a love story between a rural boy and an urban girl penned by the best-selling author.
Singh said that Bhagat had met neither him nor his father, and neither did he take permission from them while writing the book. The family’s reaction followed protest by residents of Dumraon, an erstwhile princely state in western Bihar, since Monday. They burnt copies of the book as well as effigies of Bhagat and demanded action against him.