Ilayaraja, who has been a renowned music composer in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and most Indian languages has over 40 years of experience working in this industry. In his career, it has been reported that he had composed most of his songs at Prasad Studios located at Saligrammam Chennai.
An issue arose between the composer and the studio owners regarding a room allocated to Ilaiyaraja, in which he usually composes his songs. And after a lot of talks back and forth, Ilaiyaraja had stopped recording there.
Also towards the end of last year, Director Bharathiraja and others, held talks with Prasad Studio authorities, and placed a request to them to allow Ilayaraja to continue composing in the same place for some time, during which they have notified that the film fraternity will themselves arrange a place for the Maestro.
Now, the latest report is that Ilayaraja has lodged a formal legal complaint against the Prasad Studios. The complaint has been lodged under the following grounds - "they have unlawfully threatened to disconnect electricity, water and other facilitates for my premise, also forcibly entered the premise with some henchmen and started to disturb my peaceful and exclusive possession and enjoyment of the premise threatening me not to use the premise and attempted to dispossess me from the premises."
Also, Ilayaraja has stated in his complaint that, "I reliably learnt that in recent days, the respondents through their men have broken open even my personal room in the suit premise and have removed all my valuable materials kept thereon. I have kept all my valuable composition notes, several musical instruments, my personal belongings of day to day usage, etc. The worth of some of the materials cannot be quantified by way of money. I have learnt through my known circle that the said Mr. Sai Prasad through his men has been removing, stealing and damaging many of my belongings and articles which worth several crores."
"I state that though they have prevented my ingress and egress from the studio my valuable belongings are still lying there. Using the cover of this Covid pandemic, Mr Sai Prasad and his underlings have started destroying/removing/tampering my musical instruments/notes. All my invaluable composition notes are lying there and I received credible Information that they are being sold surreptitiously in the black market for a huge sum. This amounts to daylight robbery and grand theft. Immediate criminal action has to be initiated so that the entire musical instruments, digital recording equipments belonging to me, musical notes hand written by me, which are still lying there, will not be damaged, destroyed and sold. This is being done deliberately to dishonestly enrich themselves and cause a huge loss to me. This is also being done to demoralise me and ensure that I drop all legal proceedings against them.", Ilayaraja has concluded.