“Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi is treating her baby’s dad like a bottom feeder, subjecting him to taunts and insults while cutting him out of their daughter’s life, explosive court papers charge.
In papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, venture capitalist Adam Dell says the TV temptress told him that she hoped he wasn’t little Krishna’s father — and banned him from the hospital when she was born after she found out he was.
She did allow Dell to visit for a short period the day after the girl was born, but forbade him from taking any pictures of her, the suit says.
Page Six first reported on Dell’s bid for custody of the girl earlier today, but the court filing includes numerous disturbing allegations about Lakshmi’s behavior.
The suit says the former Mrs. Salman Rushdie and Dell, who’s the brother of Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell, first became romantically involved in November 2007, and travelled the world together. They were also “sexually intimate” through the summer of 2009, when Lakshmi “withdrew emotionally,” and “began to attack [Dell] verbally with gratuitous insults,” the suit says.
“Among other things, she told him she found him to be an ‘unambitious’ man with an ‘uninteresting’ career and equally ‘unmemorable’ friends,” the suit says.
She later explained that one of the reasons she was so hostile to him was that she was pregnant — and she was really hoping he wasn’t the father.
Lakshmi told him she’d been “sexually involved with [financier] Ted Forstmann as well as with petitioner during the time she got pregnant,” and “made clear to petitioner her hope that Forstmann was the child’s biological father.”
DNA tests taken while Lakshmi was still pregnant, however, showed Dell was the dad, the suit says. He told her he wanted her name to include “Dell,” and tried to discuss how they’d raise her together, but was blown off, the suit says.
The girl was born on Feb. 22, 2010, and three days later, Lakshmi’s lawyer told Dell’s attorney she wanted “no contact with [him] whatsoever.”
He later learned that he’d been left off her birth certificate, and the food fox had “unilaterally declared ‘Lakshmi’ to be Krishna’s family name, made no reference at all to ‘Dell,'” and “referenced Forstmann ceremonially via the middle name ‘Thea,’ the feminine form of Forstmann’s first name, Theodore.”
Dell said Lakshmi pushed him into signing a restrictive temporary visitation agreement that only gives him a few hours a week with the girl. In the meantime, the suit says, Lakshmi encourages the girl to call Forstmann “Papa.” The suit makes clear that Dell and Forstmann aren;t exactly pals – Forstmann has allegedly said he hoped Dell would “f–king disappear.”
The fed-up Dell isn’t going anywhere — he’s suing for full custody, to get Krishna’s name changed and to have his name added to the birth certificate. He contends he can give their daughter a more stable home, and noted that Lakshmi has been dragging the tot around the world for her work. Dell said he was forced to go to the Bahamas to see the girl earlier this month.
A source close to Lakshmi said she was surprised that no efforts were made to keep the dispute private, and that it’s “irresponsible” to make such allegations public.
Her rep said “It appears to us that Mr. Dell remains more interested in garnering media attention than working out details to see Krishna or in her welfare.”
Dell’s lawyer, Bill Zabel, told Page Six that his client just “wants to have an active and substantial role in the upbringing of his daughter with Padma Lakshmi. Unfortunately, Ms. Lakshmi has severely limited his time with their daughter and has refused to negotiate a reasonable co-parenting agreement. Mr. Dell has tried his best to avoid going to court, but Ms. Lakshmi has given him no other choice at this time.”