Singer Udit Narayan accosted by 'first' wife

PATNA: Drama was witnessed at the Maurya Hotel here on Friday when a woman claiming to be the first wife of Bollywood singer Udit Narayan made an attempt to enter his room.
    
Ranjana Narayan, who claimed she was married to Narayan in 1984 when he was a little known singer, created a flutter when she defied hotel security guards and tried to force her entry into room number 401 occupied by him, hotel sources said.

 

The singer left the hotel soon after the incident, they added.

 

Ranjana, who had leaked the information about her proposed visit to the hotel to television news channels, repeatedly knocked at the door of the room.
    
"I have come here to seek justice. He kept me in the dark about his second marriage with Deipa, also a playback singer, for years and now I have come to seek my rightful place," she told reporters.
    
She carried with her scores of still photographs of the singer and herself besides other family members.
    
When asked why she was raising the matter now several years after the singer's alleged second marriage to Deipa, who has a son from Udit, Ranjana said, "Whenever I threatened to go public about our marriage, he silenced me with threat of committing suicide. Now I have no fears and I will take legal recourse."

 

"Look the man has no courage to come out and speak to me. He is in the room with his second wife," she said, continually tapping the door of the room ignoring requests by the hotel's security staff to leave.

 

As Ranjana refused to vacate the place, a posse of policemen arrived on the scene and soon the door opened to let Narayan and Deipa out. They were escorted by the police to the airport, where the singer had to board a flight to Mumbai.
    
Earlier, when contacted by PTI on the telephone at his suite, Narayan said, ''I am sleeping. Call me an hour later.''

 

However, he left the hotel for the airport within minutes of the call.

 

The singer refused to take questions from the media at the airport and there was a scuffle between his guards and some crew of the electronic media when they tried to have soundbytes of Deipa Narayan, Udit's Nepalese ‘wife’.
    
A few microphones of the TV crew were damaged but nobody was hurt.

 

Ranjana told PTI she will seek an appointment with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar seeking his intervention to ensure that justice was done to her.

 

''I want my rightful place as the wife of Udit Narayan and I am confident that Nitishji will see to it that I get it,'' she said, adding if nothing positive came out of her meeting with the chief minister she would move court.
    
Additional Director General of Police (Headquarters) Abhayanand and Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Kundan Krishnan said the singer had phoned seeking security saying a woman and media persons had blocked the door of his suite and he had to catch a flight.

 

Ranjana later claimed she was pushed so hard by the singer and the policemen accompanying him that she "fell to the ground".

 

She alleged that the singer had administered medicines at the behest of Deipa to "terminate her pregnancy".

 

''I kept silent for long years as I was concerned about the career of my husband which would have been in jeopardy otherwise. Moreover, he always kept on saying that being his first wife I was dear to him.''

 

Narayan, she said, had come here to attend the marriage of his niece to the grandson of the brother of a former Bihar chief minister on Thursday. He was angry since the publication of her interview in a Nepalese magazine Kaamna, which published a photograph of the couple about a year and a half ago.

 

Narayan is a native of Bhardah village in Nepal.

 

Ranjana, who stays with her parents at Balua-Nirmali village in Bihar's Supaul district, claimed her parents-in-law Harekrishna Jha and Bhuvneshwari Devi "disapproved" of their son's second marriage but were helpless as they were totally dependent on him.