Is Shirish Kunder’s Kriti lifted from a Nepali short film?

Shirish Kunder has been receiving non-stop praise for his psycho-thriller short film, which produces a shocking twist in the end. However, there is another twist to the tale, this time in real life, and not a pleasant one for the Jaan-E-Mann director. A Nepali filmmaker, Aneel Neupane, has accused Kunder of stealing the plot of Kriti from his short film titled BOB, which he had released online seven months ago.

The news came to the forefront after the Nepali filmmaker wrote about it on Facebook. “Yesterday [June 23, 2016], I woke up to find Kriti on youtube. Initially, I thought maybe the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a coincidence. I was actually excited to watch a short film starring Mr Manoj Bajpayee (a great actor whom I admire a lot!) and Neha Sharma (whom I’ve had a HUGE crush on ever since I saw her in the movie Crook). As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities [sic].”

The post continued, “Now, I have no idea how to go about on this. I’m angry not because Mr Shirish Kunder practically stole the plot and made it into his film. I’m angry because we didn’t even have lunch money while shooting BOB, and a spot boy for Kriti probably made more money than BOB’s entire budget. My team and I didn’t work our asses off just so some rich dude from India could turn it into this and get away with it. That’s just not fair.” 

Neupane also mentioned that he is happy to see his film inspiring mainstream Hindi film artistes. He said in the same post, “It feels like most Nepali filmmakers just sit and watch of a couple Bollywood movies and mix the plot together to make one crappy Nepali film. And my film was able to inspire A-class Bollywood actors and filmmakers. I think that’s a win for Nepal. It’s nice to know that a small-time rookie filmmaker from Nepal was able to inspire Big Time director and actors in Bollywood.” 

He also requested his followers to report the video on YouTube since he is not sure whether he would be able to fight against the big names of Bollywood. “If I take the fight to them, I don’t think I’m equipped financially or otherwise. It would just be a tiny voice screaming from far away for them. And a lot of people told me that they will just get away with it as they have by ripping off of numerous other films from all over the world. It would be nice if you guys would help report the video on youtube.” 

Kriti stars Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte, Neha Sharma and Manu Rishi Chadda. 

Watch the two films below and decide for yourself: