‘People Should Watch And Decide’ Devi Filmmaker On Plagiarism Allegations

Kajol recent short film ‘Devi’ received much applause for its hard hitting content that delivers the socially relevant message of increased cases of exploitation and sexual violence against women. However, soon after its release the movie got marred with plagiarism accusations. Kajol and the film producer recently broke silence on the claims that the idea of the movie has been copied from another short film available on YouTube.

Addressing the same, producer Niranjan Iyengar told Film Companion’s Anupama Chopra that it’s for the audience to decide what they feel about the two films.

“Both the films are on public domain. People should watch and decide for themselves. It’s not for me to comment on the similarities of the dissimilarities. It’s a film that came to us. It’s an issue we feel strongly about. We saw merit in the script and we have made it. The rest is for people to decide.

Affirming that the director of the film got the story and the idea and they have registered the script, he said the project was under work since Nonvember 2018. Kajol chimed in saying “Please watch it. We really want you to watch the film. Please go ahead and watch it.”

A few days after ‘Devi’ started streaming on YouTube, filmmaker Abhishek Rai and his film production house AndaKurry Productions alleged the movie has “heavy resemblance” with his own short film, Four, which he wrote and directed in 2018, ‘a child of their imagination’. The movie they claimed is n intellectual property of the ‘Asian Academy of Film & Televison.”

Devi starring Kajol, Shruti Hasaan, Neha Dhupia amongst others starts with a group of women sitting in an overcrowded room, complain abut space. The movie later goes on to reveal that all the people present in the room have suffered from sexual abuse and were murdered by their close ones.