Article: Ekta bans actors for flooding her inbox

From being the unrivalled queen of television soaps to heading one of the most adventurous production houses in the Hindi film industry, Ekta Kapoor has given several aspirants the much required 'break'.

Needless to say, she has often been at the receiving end of requests from actors. And Ekta has always maintained her poise. In fact, she has welcomed newcomers by even installing a drop box for them to submit portfolios at the Balaji office gates in Andheri years back.

But the so called 'fans' of two television actors have made her lose her calm. Harassed by several followers of television actors Harshad Chopra and Aditi Gupta - who acted in a Balaji serial that was aired last in 2010, continuously for a couple of years, Ekta has declared on a public forum her decision to never cast them in any of her TV soaps.

"Dear harshad aditi fans, I dnt knw if u guys wl get this msg but its imperative I somehow reach u guys! its been 5 years u guys hv hounded me ! spamin my inbox my phone n twitter...just because of this I PROMISE NEVER to cast these 2 ACTORS! forgeT casting them togethEr! THANKU!" -- was her exact post on the Facebook page.

"There has to be a limit. The fans of these two actors were not content with hounding me for so many years, they started harassing my friends. There was a time when my mailbox used to get jammed because they sent me all sorts of requests to cast them together in my serials. I ignored them till now. But in the last couple of months, they seemed to have crossed the line," said Ekta adding that things got out of hand when the Asia Head of a prominent channel called to say that the same fans have been spamming him as well.

"I was too angry when I updated the status on my facebook page and I have calmed down since then. But I still feel harassed," said Ekta and mentioned that she may change her mobile number now, an idea she had been resisting for long. When contacted, Harshad and Aditi denied that they were in any way responsible for the spam messages Ekta received.

"I know about this and let me tell you that I am not registered on any of the social networking sites. So, I am not aware of what my fans do there. I feel embarassed and humiliated when people come to me and say they have received such mails," said Aditi.

On the other hand, Harshad mentioned he was accused of spamming Ekta in the past. "Somebody who claims to be my fan is doing this. But I don't really know who. We don't have any control over our fans. I am really sorry on their behalf but that is the most I can do at the moment," said Harshad.