London, July 25, 2007 - Bollywood cinestar Shilpa Shetty today threatened to take legal action against the estranged wife of UK-based NRI entrepreneur Raj Kundra, if she continued to tarnish her image by claiming she was responsible for the break-up of her marriage.

Refuting Kavita Kundra's allegation, Shilpa said "If she continues to tarnish my name out of any insecurity or otherwise, I will consider taking legal action as I see no reason why my name is being dragged into this mess", as per Zee News. 

Raj Kundra was associated with her for the last three months in connection with the launch of her perfume S2 and now they are "friends", Shilpa said. "If I was linked to every friend I had I would have no friends left."

"My understanding is that Raj and Kavita's marriage was over a year ago and they have filed for divorce and have been living separately for over a year. I met Raj Kundra 3 months ago in a business capacity, so where the question of me breaking up her marriage arises, this is impossible as I have known him for 12 weeks."

"I am disgusted by her reported comments and completely refute the allegation," Shilpa said.

Kavita, in an interview with the news of the world tabloid two days ago, had accused Shilpa of wrecking her marriage, claiming that the 32-year-old Bollywood diva is now "an item with her film producer husband Raj".

"I feel for her if she is going through some frustrations in life but refuse to stand for her using my name to vent these frustrations," Shilpa said, adding "my culture and upbringing does not permit me to break marriages."

In a statement, the winner of the Celebrity Big Brother TV show expressed her shock at the way "someone called Kavita Kundra" seems to be "latching onto my name with baseless allegations against me of ruining her marriage".

"For someone I have never met or heard of to make such a public attempt to tarnish my name is inexcusable, uncalled for and I would like to respond and make a clarification once and for all," she said.

The actress said she knew Raj as he was introduced to her three months ago regarding the perfume "as he is a business associate of Farhat Hussain, who is handling some of my work.

"As I have had an active involvement in every aspect of the perfume we have had numerous interactions which culminated in a perfume launch for the press and another for the public which involved visiting perfume stores in the UK around the launch to promote the new fragrance. As a result of this we would obviously have been seen together in stores when the perfume was being launched."

Shilpa said "Raj has handled the perfume launch very well, worked hard on it and is not only a part of my team, but we are also now friends which by no angle is a crime in any part of the world."

As for reports about her being "dumped" by her UK publicist Max Clifford, she said "I just want to say I have respect for max and all he has achieved and while we worked together recently, it was good while we were together and as Max himself has stated our six months term was over and we parted ways mutually, so there is no question of being dumped!

"When a contract ends, it ends, it's not one party disowning the other," she said.