Shirish Kunder's short 'Kriti' pulled down by YouTube amid plagiarism allegations

Amid allegations of plagiarism, Shirish Kunder’s short film Kriti, starring Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and Neha Sharma, has been taken down from YouTube.

The film, which garnered millions of hits since it was uploaded on 22 June, found itself in the midst of a copyright infringement row after Nepali filmmaker Aneel Neupane alleged that Kriti was based on his short film Bob.

Bob was released as a private video on the sharing network Vimeo in October 2015, Neupane said, and had been uploaded for general viewing on Vimeo and YouTube by December 2015 and May 2016 respectively. However, Shirish countered that his film had been shot by February 2016, and he had no knowledge of Neupane’s film.

On Monday, Shirish had filed a legal notice against Neupane, as well as seeking a written apology.

The notice, a copy of which was shared by news agency IANS, stated that Kunder made Kriti as a “professional film”.

“Kunder completed shooting the film in February 2016. It then went into post-production and was published on June 22, 2016.”

Kunder’s notice read that he could “not have obtained a copy” of Bob. In fact, he says that since the script of “Kriti” was available with a few people, it is “entirely possible” that Neupane came across it and then put Bob together.

“Assuming your position is correct that the two films are so similar, then it is you who has infringed our client’s copyright,” the notice to Neupane said.

Kunder had demanded that Neupane tender an “unconditional written apology”, refrain from making any oral or written comments on Kriti and take down Bob from the Internet immediately and “refrain from publishing the same or any part thereof on any other medium”.

In an interview with Mid-Day , Shirish’s wife, filmmaker Farah Khan has countered the plagiarism allegations against Kriti. She said Shirish had been working on the script since 2014.