Shree Narayan Singh on ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ plagiarism accusations

Akshay Kumar’s eagerly awaited film ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ has been overshadowed by the issue of a copyright infringement. The accusation comes from documentary maker Praveen Vyas, however director Shree Narayan Singh has finally spoken out about the situation.

Reported in Asian Age, Singh has finally emerged to say what he thinks about the whole matter. “Any film on open-air defecation would have generic similarities. And Mr Vyas is taking undue advantage of those incidental similarities that he may have perceived. Luckily for us, we are very clear about this situation. Our writers  Siddharth and Garima registered this script in 2014. Every scene that we’ve shot is in that script that was duly registered three years ago. We have the script’s registered copy at the Writers’ Association with us in hard copy, signed and official.”

Vyas made a short film called ‘Manini’ (2016) and Singh challenges his accusation saying he had already uploaded the scripts for ‘Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’ two years before Vyas’ film released. “His film was uploaded on the Internet on October 19, 2016, almost two years after we registered our script. It’s therefore humanly impossible for us to have peeped into Mr Vyas’ script. And hypothetically speaking, if we had looked at his short film, how could we make a film based on his work in just the months since October 2016? Film making is not an easy medium that we could finish everything from casting to shooting in a matter of days.”

With what looks like a long court battle ahead, Singh is determined that this litigation will not get in the way of the film’s release. “Mr Vyas knows this is nothing but a nuisance litigation meant to harass producers and filmmakers at the last minute. I am not going to allow my producers a dent in their pocket to silence greed. The first trailer of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha came out a few months ago. Why didn’t Mr Vyas react then? Why has he waited till just a few weeks before our film is to release?” Singh questions.

Singh goes on to explain the concept of the film was made well before the Swach Bharat Andolan. “We are very sure about our intentions and the chronology of our film’s development and shooting. We thought of  Toilet: Ek Prem Katha long before the  Swach Bharat Andolan, whereas Vyas made his short film specifically for that crusade.”