CHENNAI: A R Murugadoss isn’t one of those pathologically angry men. But you can change all that fairly easily by bringing up the plagiarism charges that Gopi Nainar slung at him. “Anybody would be angry if they had to watch videos of someone saying the kind of things that Gopi said about me. I’m no exception,” he says.
News from the director’s camp is that Gopi withdrew his case against the Kaththi director and was asked to pay a fine of `1,000, but the orders from the court are still pending. It may be recalled that the film industry was divided down the middle when Gopi Nainar filed a case that A R Murugadoss had stolen Kaththi’s story from him, and after it was dismissed, gave a lot of interviews that went viral. “There was a lot of stress on me to reply to him. But I didn’t. That caused a lot of psychological pain for me to add to my health problems. I was already filled with the fear of having to deliver a hit with Vijay, and worried about whether people will compare it with Thuppakki,” explains the director.
On the eve of the court’s ruling being made public, Murugadoss says that his anger has translated into something useful — the resolve to make an example of his tormentor. “I’m very determined that I will not let this go. People like this have made a habit of waiting till a movie is ready for release and then threaten it with such claims. And then they come and bargain and negotiate with us for money. This cannot go on,” he says harshly.
Murugadoss has filed a defamation suit against Gopi and intends to follow it to the hilt. “It’s because of people like this that there is no safety for directors. Even if I have to go and file a case in the Supreme Court, I will not let him go. He must explain why he made those accusations about me and if he can’t then he will be punished and put in jail, according to the law,” he gesticulates.