Shirish Kunder sends legal notice to Nepali filmmaker on plagiarism claims

Mumbai: Filmmaker Shirish Kunder, who recently released his short film 'Kriti', was in news when Nepali filmmaker Aneel Neupane claimed that it is a copy of his own short, BOB.

Now, in response to Aneel Neupane's plagiarism claims, Shirish has filed a legal notice and has sought a written apology. He has not only asked Aneel to refrain from making any oral or written comments on 'Kriti' but has also demanded that BOB should be taken down from the internet immediately.

While according to Aneel, BOB was ready in October 2015 and he uploaded it on Vimeo as a private video to share it with close friends. He then released it on YouTube on May 12 this year.

In response to that, Shirish said that he completed shooting the film in February 2016 and after putting in several months into post-production process, it was published on June 22, 2016.

The filmmaker further added that he could not have obtained a copy of BOB. Shirish alleged that because the script of 'Kriti' was with a few people, it is possible that Aneel might have came across it and made BOB.

'Kriti' features Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte, Neha Sharma and Manu Rishi in a brief turn. At the launch held earlier this month, Shirish had said, "Unlike my feature films, Kriti is what I have written and I made it the way I thought. As a digital medium, you don't have to fight with censor. It is more liberal medium. I will surely make more short films along with feature films."

Watch the film here.