I've a customer who agreed to pay me my fee of 1 lac to get him a business in USA signed up and for that I did all the legal formalities like giving a non disclosure agreement and made the US client available in India for meeting.
But the customer requested time to pay amount on account of leverage to do scrutiny of legal docs and clients credentials in USA to do justice on his investment he was to do and passed only 25k by imps.
Further on getting the legal formalities verification process done I requested the customer to settle my committed fee and they changed their words about not paying unless getting process contract.
They passed my client person a contact person who was known to them in USA for doing my clients company scrutiny done and my clients did fix an appointment with them to meet but the person whom they are known to started backbiting my client about my fraudulent methods of taking money and doing this business where my customer pays only 25k against legal agreement for 1 lac.
The customer tried to create unrest to me and put me in WhatsApp that : you and your client person both are proved to do fake business and taking money from us to cheat in name of giving process and your client person is not meeting my person to get his credentials verified so we are going ahead and filing a legal police complaint of the scam business you are running and so is your client person trying to do with us.
So my question is in what ways as per civil law I can claim my fees for the client interaction which is already done by my customer and the bad mouthing he's trying to do through his representative in USA to get it passed to my client which is equal to spoiling my reputation on business with my client company.