Shirish Kunder has been accused of plagiarism by Nepali film maker Aneel Neupane.
AB Wire
Kriti, a new short film starring Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and Neha Sharma, has been taken down from YouTube amid allegations of plagiarism.
The film, which written and directed by Shirish Kunder reportedly been watched over 2.5 million times since it was uploaded on 22 June.
Shirish Kunder has been accused of plagiarism by Nepali film maker Aneel Neupane, who alleged that Kriti was based on his short film BOB, released seven months ago.
Bob was released as a private video on the sharing network Vimeo in October 2015 and had been uploaded for general viewing on Vimeo and YouTube by December 2015 and May 2016 respectively, Neupane said.
“Initially, I thought may be the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a co-incidence. I was actually excited to watch a short film starring Mr Manoj Bajpayee ( A great actor whom I admire a lot!) and Neha Sharma (whom I’ve had a HUGE crush on ever since I saw her in the movie Crook). As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities.” Neupane wrote on Facebook.
On Tuesday, news agency IANS reported that Shirish Kunder had sent Neupane a legal notice demanding an “unconditional written apology” and has asked him to refrain from making any oral or written comments on Kriti.
The notice also stated that Kunder completed shooting of the film in February 2016. It then went into post-production and was published on June 22, 2016.
Shirish Kunder has directed films like Jaan-E-Mann and Joker and has edited his film maker wife Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na. He has produced and scored music for Farah’s film Tees Maar Khan.
Social Media Update:
Those who seek Kriti will find it removed. @ShirishKunder #KritiStoleBOB
Thank you all for the immense support. pic.twitter.com/VOY4N01OYB— Aneel Neupane (@AneelNeupane) June 28, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly0XfkV_dnM