The much-talked about recent wedding of British actress Elizabeth Hurley to non-resident Indian businessman Arun Nayar was marred by a bitter family row with the groom's father disowning the couple saying he was humiliated at the ceremony, a leading tabloid in London claimed on Sunday.
While the media had jostled to get a peek into the celebrations in Jodhpur last month, the couple had sold exclusive rights to Hello! magazine for £2 million. Now it has emerged that an unseemly wrestling match broke out in the middle of the sacred Hindu ceremony -- to the astonishment of the 200 guests and Vinod Nayar was ejected from his own son Arun's wedding, The Mail said.
According to the report, 66-year-old Vinod has reacted with fury, disowning his two sons, saying they were complicit in his humiliation.
But the real target of his anger, the person he blames for this shameful turn of events, is none other than Hurley. And it is the result, he said, of her obsessive appetite for lucrative publicity.
"I believe it was expressly done on Elizabeth's orders," he said adding, the couple was openly reluctant to invite Nayar's Indian family.
"May be they didn't really want my side of the family there. They didn't even have the manners to invite my 87-year-old mother. I have totally disowned them (his sons). I want nothing more to do with them or their wives. It was important for her (Hurley) to get celebrity faces there. That's what the Hello! deal was about. She was fulfilling her contractual obligation," Vinod said.
"My wife and I were publicly humiliated and treated like social outcasts for the sake of a £2 million magazine deal. We were pushed into the background like poor relations," Vinod said.
"I considered it an insult that she was not wearing the £35,000 diamond and ruby necklace I offered as a wedding gift. But the most offensive and hurtful thing was to be denied, in the presence of all those people, the opportunity to accept her formally into the family, as is the Indian custom. This is not the behaviour of a woman with integrity and honour." he said.
According to the report, the wedding was never going to be a family occasion. Spread over six days across two continents, from picturesque Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire to the 548-year-old Meherangarh Fort, Rajasthan, it was packed with celebrities.
According to Vinod, things turned sour two weeks before the wedding. Liz was angry because Vinod's second wife Joanne had spoken to the Indian press about the wedding.
Vinod said they were shocked to find that their hotel reservation in a village near Sudeley Castle, which Hurley and Arun had promised to arrange, had either been cancelled or had not been made.
"I once had a very good relationship with my sons. When Liz came along, I happily welcomed her into the fold. And this is the way she has repaid me," he lamented, adding, "My elderly mother cried because they did not tell her about the wedding, even though she lives here in the same building as me and my sons."
Vinod had been married to Arun's mother German-born Gunhild Hapke for over 20 years but they divorced in 1996.
