MUMBAI: An ex-student has accused the makers of Kajol-starrer "Devi" of plagiarising his short film "Four".
The film depicts how nine women belonging to different strata of society are brought together by circumstance and end up forming a sisterhood after they share their stories of abuse.
Directed by Priyanka Banerjee, the short is produced by Niranjan Iyengar and Ryan Ivan Stephen.
In a Facebook post, Abhishek Rai alleged the movie has "heavy resemblance" with his own short film, which he wrote and directed in 2018.
"Here's something I'd like to bring to everybody's notice. We at AndaKurry Productions, made a short film when we were in film school, two years back called 'FOUR' that dealt with a premise of rape victims sitting together in a room when a new victim arrives. And yesterday, a film named 'Devi' was uploaded to LargeShortFilms's YouTube channel that has heavy resemblance and the premise is also of the film we made," Rai said.
Here is the short film 'FOUR' by AndaKurry Productions:
He said it is "ruthless" on the part of "Devi" makers to claim his work as theirs.
"Our film was a student (film) with very little production design, bad audio and stuff, but still it's a child of our own imagination and it's ruthless how anyone can just pick up a piece of thought and claim it to be theirs."
The film is an intellectual property of Asian Academy of Film & Television. No one has contacted him regarding any kind of query.
Now, I have not been contacted by large short films or the makers of the film regarding any kind of query," he claimed.
The makers of "Devi" remained unavailable for comment when contacted.