/> Rana Daggubati's family which is profoundly revered in Telugu film industry, is not amused by rumours linking him with Bipasha Basu and Shriya Saran.

Rana defends himself by arguing, "Baseless rumours always die down on their own. These rumours are of interest for a few days or weeks then nobody is bothered once the film is out. My focus is the film, not rumours. "

Rana stoutly defends himself against the amorous rumours. "I am in Hyderabad right now. I'm running between Mumbai and Hyderabad promoting two releases in Hindi and Telugu. The last thing I need is for my family and friends to feel I'm chasing women in both Chennai and Mumbai. "

Speaking for the time on his true relationship with Bipasha, Rana says, "She's so much my senior. I respect her so much. During our film together she helped me a lot because I was a newcomer in Hindi cinema.

We're paired together in Dum Maro Dum, so we spent a lot of time together. She's a wonderful human and friend. Such talk is just making things uncomfortable between us. "

Rana feels linking him with Bipasha is over-stepping the line of decorum. "It's very embarrassing. It's going into her and my personal space and it's not right. There're acceptable and non-acceptable levels of speculation.

But this is an invasion of private space and also not correct because I'm most certainly not seeing Bipasha. The people who are going to watch our film are not coming to see the film because people are talking about us.

When I'm promoting my new Telugu film in Hyderabad the focus is on the film. The audience is not bothered with who's seeing whom or whom he is not seeing. "

He protests about the rumours suggesting he has broken up with Tamil-Hindi actress Shriya Saran because of Bipasha. "I was never seeing Shriya in the first place to break up with her. I've known Sriya for eight years now. She's a buddy

. There has never been a whisper of a link-up between us in the South. This is a romance made and manufactured in Mumbai. Shriya is from Mumbai and one of the few friends I've there. So every time I'm in the city I spend time with her.

I've my our production-house's flat in Mumbai where I stay whenever I'm in the city. But before Dum Maro Dum Sriya was one of the few friends I had in Mumbai. "

The Shriya rumours have been particularly unsavoury for Rana. The debutant says with an embarrassed laugh, "This is getting too strange to be funny any more.

I've known Sriya from my college days. I was the line producer and still photographer in one of her first Telugu films. Eventhough she has done films in three South Indian languages she has always been a Mumbai girl. "

Rana's parting shots: "As soon as I really get myself a girlfriend people will stop linking me to the wrong people. "