In the year 2009, an alleged case of copyright infringement and plagiarism was lodged against producer-director Boney Kapoor, his wife Sridevi, filmmaker Prabudheva and actor Salman Khan for their film, 'Wanted'. A local writer, Birbal Singh Rana, alleged that for the movie, Boney Kapoor 's production house had stolen his original script, 'Rajabhai IPS'.
In the petition filed by Rana, he had claimed that he submitted his copyright script to BSK Productions, which they had rejected and recreated it with 'Wanted'. While the production house had denied the allegations, in August 2010 the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, BD Bharti, directed them to be present before the court on November 22. However, as the team of 'Wanted' failed to appear in the court, a non-bailable warrant was issued against them.
Following this, Boney Kapoor appealed to the Allahabad High Court. And now seven years later, Boney Kapoor has won the case against the petitioner, Birbal Singh Rana. On Tuesday, the Allahabad HC acquitted Boney Kapoor and others involved of all the charges. It was later revealed that Birbal had been blackmailing Boney Kapoor and demanding an out-of-the-court settlement of Rs 75 lakhs.
The Additional Government Advocate, RD Yadav, who ruled in the favour of the filmmaker stated, "This kind of extortion is becoming a practice by miscreants who target high-profile celebrities. There is no copyright violation of the idea, subject matter, theme, plot or historical or legendary facts. The applicant (Boney and Co.) are innocent and have not committed the present offence."
Talking about the same, Boney Kapoor said, "I have legally bought the rights to and remade 16 films. In the case of 'Wanted', I not only bought the rights from Prabhudheva who had directed the Tamil version, and eventually the Hindi remake but also from Puri Jagannadh, who was the original creator and producer of the 2006-Telugu film, 'Pokiri'. I was shocked when I got the first summons, more so when the lower court in Meerut accused us of copyright infringement without proper verification of the script. The petitioner then started harassing and blackmailing us, trying to extort money for no fault of ours."
When asked if Boney has any plans to produce the sequel and if they were delayed due to the case, to which Boney replied, "No way! I would never let a case like this hinder the sequel. I will roll with 'Wanted 2' whenever I have the right script for the film. It is very difficult to imagine 'Wanted 2' without Salman."
CREDITS: MUMBAI MIRROR