Raabta makers fight Magadheera team over plagiarism allegations in court
Mumbai: Makers of ‘Raabta’ argued for over 5 hours in court yesterday and today citing several differences in the script and storyline of their films ‘Raabta’ and ‘Magadheera’. Their lawyers argued that the background of the lead characters, their storyline development, the role of villain, the foreign locations and most importantly the finale of the film is completely and materially different from ‘Magadheera’.
They pointed out that the concerns of the makers of ‘Magadheera’ that the iconic 100 warriors scene has been lifted in ‘Raabta’ is completely unfounded as there was no such scene either in their film or the trailer. They said that in their film, unlike ‘Magadheera,’ the villainous character was in fact an anti-hero and a parallel interest point for the heroin. Even in the back story depicting the past life of characters, the Hero of the film actually plays a negative character for most part.
The makers further pointed out the similarities, even if there were any, were purely on themes that are generic to every film made on reincarnation of two lovers such as ‘Prem,’ ‘Hamesha,’ ‘Om Shanti Om,’ ‘Kudrat’ etc. In fact, the makers cited a list of more than 100 films on the theme of reincarnation.
When contacted, Ankit Relan, lawyer for Tseries confirmed that the injunction application has today been reserved for orders.
He said, "We have filed the entire script of our film along with a comparative chart showing how the two films are completely different in the their story, treatment and expression, something that the Plaintiff ought to have done in the first place as part of his pleadings to show comparative similarities. Neither were any such similarities pointed out nor has the Plaintiff been filed its script for the judge to make a comparison. The entire suit, which has been filed at the eleventh hour despite the trailer coming out more than six weeks ago, is based on conjectures.
"We can't understand how a film of over 2.30 hours in duration can reasonably be compared with a trailer of around 2 minutes to jump to a conclusion of Copyright infringement. We even offered to show the entire film to the Plaintiff as far back as on 17th of last month itself, to which the counsels for Plaintiff responded only on the midnight of 30th May, 2017, one night before the next hearing, stating that the reply was left lying with the watchman of their building all this while. They rejected the offer to see the film, of course.
"We have learnt that both sides requested the court to pass the order in the first half tomorrow so as to have time to approach the appellate court if needed, however the court refused to be bound by any such timelines."
It will now be interesting to see the verdict tomorrow.
