PK makers summoned by Indian court for ‘plagiarism’

The Delhi High Court on Wednesday issued notice to the producers and directors of Aamir Khan‘s ‘PK’ on a novelist’s plea accusing the makers of the movie of plagiarising certain portions from his Hindi book ‘Farishta’ published in 2013.

Directors Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Raj Kumar Hirani, production companies and scriptwriter Abhijat Joshi have been summoned by the court on April 16.

The court’s notice came on a plea by writer Kapil Isapuri alleging that Chopra and Hirani, directors of the film, their production companies and scriptwriter Joshi have “stolen the characters, expression of ideas, scenes (sequences) from the novel”.

He sought punitive damages of Rsone crore from the makers along with credit for his work.

In his plea, Isapuri claimed that in his novel he “has criticised blind following of so-called godmen” as well as that “profession of religion is not natural but is man-made and artificial” and “in a group of people nobody can identify their respective religion”.
He also claimed that various other issues raised by the movie have been “copied” from his book. “That the novel has many more such situations which have been very cleverly copied by the defendants in the film by making minor changes and insignificant variations,” the petition claimed.

‘PK’, starring Aamir Khan, Anushka Sharma, Sanjay Dutt and Sushant Singh Rajput in pivotal roles, is a satire on godmen. It narrates the story of an alien (Aamir) who comes to Earth on a research mission and befriends a television journalist Jagat (Anushka) and questions religious dogmas and superstitions.