YouTube takes down Shirish Kunder’s Kriti

Filmmaker Shirish Kunder's short film, Kriti, starring Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and Neha Sharma opened to an overwhelmingly positive response a week ago on 22 June. Since then the writer-director has come under scrutiny with allegations of copyright infringement.

Aneel Neupane, a Nepali filmmaker, has stated his short film, Bob, was uploaded to YouTube in May of this year and has been completed since October 2015. Neupane further claims that Kriti has lifted the plot and certain scenes have been taken from his short film.

Today, the video-sharing website took down Kriti with the following statement, "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Aneel Neupane".

Just yesterday in an interview, Shirish Kunder’s wife, Farah Khan, defended her husband, saying that he was working on the story since the last three years. She also insinuated that the makers of Bob are using Kunder’s film for publicity.

She elaborated, “Nobody knew about their film until recently, but there is a limit to everything. Every time a film releases, someone gets up and alleges plagiarism. Any Tom, Dick and Harry cannot just cry foul and take away someone's hard work.”

Kunder has already filed a legal notice against Neupane, asking for a written apology and demands to remove their film as well.