Kajol's short film debut with Priyanka Banerjee directed Devi created a positive stir across the audience with its tight narrative and a compelling message. While the audience couldn't stop admiring it, Abhishek Rai accused the makers of plagiarism. The freelance filmmaker who made a short film titled Four for his college assignment in 2018 found a striking resemblance between the projects that spoke about sexual harassment. Abhishek, during an interview with a leading daily, expressed his concern over the matter and asked the matter for a public apology. He said although he liked Devi, he is disappointed with the uncanny similarities.
Now, after Abhishek's demand for a public apology surfaced across, the producer of Devi, Niranjan Iyengar and Kajol, in an interview with an entertainment portal spoke about it. Niranjan in the interview said that both the films are on social media platforms and asked the audience to decide for themselves. He further defended himself and told that Priyanka approached him with the story. Niranjan added that since the story was strong, he agreed to back it and informed that Devi is a registered work of art. “Both the films are on the public domain. People should watch and decide for themselves. It’s not for me to comment on the similarities of the dissimilarities. It’s a film that came to us. It’s an issue we feel strongly about. We saw merit in the script and we have made it. The rest is for people to decide. Priyanka got us the script and my business partner Ryan was basically the one who got us the script. Everything is in place. It’s a registered script. It came to us in 2018 November. We made the film, it’s come out,” Niranjan told.
Kajol, in the same interview, also came out in support of her film and requested the audience to watch it. "Please watch it. We really want you to watch the film. Please go ahead and watch it,” Kajol said. Further, when Niranjan was probed into the matter, he clearly declined to comment.
Soon after the interview was available on social media platforms, viewers lashed out at Niranjan for refusing to accept his mistake of plagiarising a student's work. One of the users commented, "I just saw ethics being butchered. What a shameless man. "He would not like to comment anymore" while the other called it 'disgusting'.
The 13-minute-long film Devi also features Shruti Haasan, Neha Dhupia, Neena Kulkarni, Mukta Barve, Sandhya Mhatre, Rama Joshi, Shivani Raghuvanshi and Yashaswini Dayama. Devi is directed and written by debutante Priyanka. It is produced by Niranjan's and Ryan Stephen's Electric Apples Entertainment. The short film released on March 2, 2020.
(Source: Film Companion/YouTube)
