Toilet: Ek Prem Katha in trouble over plagiarism row

New Delhi: Akshay Kumar and Bhumi Pednekar's upcoming social satire 'Toilet: Ek Prem Katha' has landed in trouble much ahead of its release. According to IndianExpress.com, a documentary filmmaker, Praveen Vyas has sent a legal notice to the Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the distribution company of the film and the film’s producers alleging that several moments and dialogues from the film were lifted from his award-winning documentary film Manini.

The report attributes the news to Mumbai Mirror originally. The report quotes Praveen Vyas' statement where he said, “We have sent a legal notice to Viacom 18, as Toilet Ek Prem Katha seems to be a frame to frame copy of the plot and theme of our documentary film, Manini. We had submitted the film at the International Film Festival Of India (IFFI), in Goa 2016. There were around 4500 entries at the festival, all having Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan as the theme. We have sent a four pager notice to the makers of Toilet (Toilet: Ek Prem Katha) and they sent us a reply only after ten days, that too asking for more time to review our notice.”

“Its plot was novel and the characters unique and my docu-feature was commended for its creativity and treatment. No one can make another cinematographic work or any other derivative work without my written consent if their work directly resembles mine,” Praveen Vyas told Mumbai Mirror.

One the other hand, Shital Bhatia, co-producer of 'Toilet: Ek Prem Katha' has slammed these claims. “These allegations are baseless and border on harassment. The script of our film has been registered under our writers’ names, Siddharth and Garima, with the authorised industry association since 2013. Furthermore, the film has been in the public domain through various news stories since July 2015. We firmly deny all the claims made by this gentleman who is obviously misled. It is sad that genuine producers have become soft targets for this kind of nuisance,” he said.

The film is releasing on August 11, 2017.