Rustom writer files complaint against Shahid Kapoor's Batti Gul Meter Chalu

After Prernaa Arora is thrown out of  Shree Narayan Singh's Batti Gul Meter Chalu starring Shahid Kapoor, the film gets mired into copyright infringement case

Shooting of Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor and Yami Gautam's Batti Gul Meter Chalu began early this year in February but soon it was stalled due to several issues including non-payment of dues. Seeing the fate of the social drama in limbo, producer Bhushan Kumar jumped in as a saviour and took the reigns from KriArj Entertainment's Prernaa Arora.

However, it seems that troubles are not going to end for this film very soon. Now, Rustom writer, Vipul Rawal has filed a complaint against director Shree Narayan Singh and writers Siddharth and Garima Rawal. In a complaint filed with the Film Writers Association (FWA), Rawal has charged the team with copyright infringement and unethical behaviour.

In the complaint, Vipul mentioned that he registered the story in 2009 with title Roshini and later registered final draft in 2016. Next year, he signed an agreement with KriArj Entertainment after which it was narrated to Shahid and Shraddha who eventually agreed to be part of the movie. However, director Shree Narayan Singh wanted certain changes in the screenplay written by him and that too by his own writers. Even after modifying the screenplay, his name was not in the teaser.

Rawal told DNA, ''The director wanted certain changes in the screenplay and for that, he decided to employ writers of his choice to make the modifications in my screenplay. The pre-production started and the dates for shooting were locked. However, when the first teaser came out, my name wasn’t mentioned anywhere. Instead, it boldly proclaimed, ‘From the writer and director of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha’. Immediately, I sent multiple mails to the producers, who assured me that the issue will be rectified at the earliest.''

Rawal also claimed to have written several mails to Shree Narayan Singh but all went in vain, instead director’s partner, Nitin Chandrachud gave a response. ''He sent me a mail saying that the subject of my film (electricity) is in public domain and anyone can write on it. This, after the entire project, was set up on the basis of the screenplay written by me. They also mentioned that they will mention my credits only as ‘concept by’, which is totally unacceptable to me,'' he said.