How PK is similar to Farishta. Or is it?

The makers of PK have been accused of plagiarism by the author of Farishta. But both the film and the book play with generic issues

On January 21, Delhi High Court issued a notice to the producers and directors of the Aamir Khan-starrer PK on novelist Kapil Isapuri’s plea that the makers of the film had plagiarised certain portions from his Hindi novel Farishta that was published in 2013. While director Rajkumar Hirani, producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra and scriptwriter Abhijat Joshi, who have been asked by Justice Najmi Waziri to appear before the joint registrar of the High Court on April 16, were unavailable for comment, sources close to them say this is a publicity-grabbing stunt by an unknown author.

PK, which is still running in some theatres, has domestic box office collections of Rs 338 crore, making it India’s highest-grossing film to date. Isapuri has demanded punitive damages of Rs 1 crore as well as due credit. An engineer from Amroha in Uttar Pradesh, Isapuri says he got the idea for Farishta in 2006, started work on it in 2007 and finished writing it in 2009. The book was published in 2013 by Prakashan Sansthan, a publisher based in Daryaganj, New Delhi, with a first print run of 800 books.

But why did Isapuri wait for five weeks after the film’s release to file his case? “I watched the film on January 1 and was mentally disturbed after that as it seemed completely similar to my own book,” Isapuri says over the phone. He wrote to the Film Writers Association on January 4, which rejected his application as he wasn’t a registered writer with them. He finally filed the motion in court on January 15 and it was accepted on January 21. Isapuri claims that many dialogues, scenes and themes have been lifted from the book with mild variation in the film. “This is gross exploitation of a little-known writer,” he says.

Sources close to the producers counter that Isapuri’s book was released in 2013 by when PK's principal shooting (which began in 2011) had already been completed. “Everything at the script level was already done by 2013, so we can easily claim that he, in fact, copied us,” says a source associated with the film.

Isapuri lists the similarities in content between his book and the film. “Inter-religious love in shown in my book and religion has been critiqued in detail in the same way as I have done in my book,” he says. “The connection between religion and fashion has been discussed in the film and I have done the same in my book. Even the tapasvi (godman) in the film speaks in a manner similar to the godman in my book. The role of the media and its pandering to TRPs is also something I have explored in my book, which is portrayed through the depressed doggy scene in PK, and in many more scenes” he says.

Generic as all these issues seem, Isapuri insists that “the depth and dialogues of the film absolutely match Farishta’s” and that the crux of the book has been lifted, which is what he is prepared to contest in court.

  Before this, Hirani had found himself in a controversy with 3 Idiots, another film starring Khan, when Chetan Bhagat, the author of Five Point Someone, the book that had inspired the film, alleged that he was not given proper credit. A spokesperson for Hirani asserts that the controversy around 3 Idiots was completely different from this one. “We had given him end credits and officially purchased the rights of the book. He had even given us a no-objection certificate,” says the spokesperson. “After watching the film, Bhagat felt professionally aggrieved and demanded opening credits as well as a credit as co-screenplay writer, without ever having sat down for one session of the screenplay writing. That was a simple case of ‘management of expectations’ gone wrong,” the spokesperson adds.

Bollywood has been rife with accusations of plagiarism of every kind – from lyrics and music to plot-lines and cinematography – but there is no precedent of a successful injunction yet. The cases that have been taken to court are still awaiting judgement. There have also been incidents of Hollywood producers accusing Indian some film makers of copyright violation but eventually settling the matter out of court.

A Mumbai-based intellectual property rights (IPR) lawyer, who does not wish to be named, says, “Copyright law in India, which covers all literary and artistic work, follows the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. This stipulates that copyright exists the moment you create a work of art.” In this case, then, Isapuri can claim that the copyright exists from 2009, when he finished writing the book. “IPR has gained traction in the country in the last 20 years and is continually growing. The law itself is fairly evolved. It is a solid statute and the mechanisms are all in place -- they just need to be better enforced,” says the lawyer.

In this particular case, if the content under scrutiny turns out to be generic or unoriginal, then the law stipulates no protection for unoriginal work, explains the lawyer. Another possibility is that the two parties came up with the same work of art independently around the same time, in which case there will be no copyright violation and both will be granted independent and equivalent copyrights. The final outcome is for the courts to decide.