Tolly trio says Irrfan-starrer copied from ‘Ramdhanu’, may move court

KOLKATA: Filmmakers Shiboprosad Mukherjee and Nandita Roy have levelled plagiarism charges on the makers of Irrfan Khan-starrer ‘Hindi Medium’ produced by Dinesh Vijan and Bhusan Kumar. Atanu Raychaudhuri, producer of Bengali film ‘Ramdhanu’, is moving court accusing the Hindi filmmakers of copyright infringement and seeking Rs 5-crore compensation.
On October 4 last year, Mukherjee had informed Mukesh Bhatt, the president of Film & Television Producers Guild of India, to take action against the movie directed by Saket Chaudhary.Mukherjee had claimed the film is a copy of ‘Ramdhanu’. He had written: “Recently, we have been informed by a close friend and business associate that they were approached by director Saket Chaudhary and producer Dinesh Vijan to invest in a film which has a storyline similar to ‘Ramdhanu’ with Mr Irrfan Khan in the lead. On being denied, they then approached T-Series for the same. Also, we had contacted Mr Irrfan Khan for the lead role in the Hindi remake of the original Bengali film. He also confirmed he has been offered a similar role in a similar story. Kindly note we have not given anybody any language-remake right other than Malayalam and would request you to kindly look into the matter as we consider this to be an infringement of copyright.”
Mukherjee and his team’s worst fears came true when they heard the storyline of ‘Hindi Medium’ that described it as a light-hearted comedy revolving around a Hindi-speaking couple who do everything possible to get their child admitted to an English-medium school. Mukherjee said: “A couple’s problems to get the child admitted to an English-medium school is what our ‘Ramdhanu’ was all about. Even the profession of Irrfan and my character is the same — both are businessmen. But the makers of ‘Hindi Medium’ didn’t take any permission from us. The film has officially been remade in Malayalam in 2015. The Malayalam remake rights for ‘Salt Mango Tree’ were sold for Rs 15 lakh. How can someone plagiarize our film in Hindi?”
When TOI got in touch with Bhatt, he said, “Yes, they had spoken to me about this issue. But I personally have nothing to do with this film. If they have proof their content was copied, they should move court.” Kumar added: “This is the first time I am hearing about such a complaint.” Vijan wasn’t available for comment.