Toilet plagiarism row: Writers Garima-Siddharth ponder suing Manini maker

A few days ago, documentary filmmaker Praveen Vyas had sued the makers of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha saying the Akshay Kumar-starrer was a direct copy of his documentary Manini. Garima Wahal and Siddharth Singh, the writers of Toilet: Ek Prem Katha have strongly denied Vyas’s claim and are contemplating suing him in turn, according to the BollywoodHungama.com website.

Defending their film, the duo said producer-director Neeraj Pandey had commissioned the film in 2013 and they started working on the project in December that year and registered their script with the Film Writers' Association in 2014.

Around the same time, the duo came across the same real-life story (of Priyanka  Bharti) and accordingly made alterations to their fictional tale.

"Neeraj Sir liked that and asked us to go ahead with it. After that, we left for research to places like Mathura, Nandgaon, Barsana, Jhansi and Bahraich, which is near Lucknow,” Siddharth Singh told BollywoodHungama.com.

Wahal expressed shock at the plagiarism charge. She said, “It’s not possible to pick up a story from any documentary and take a film to the floors within a few weeks. Is it plausible, especially with a film that stars mainstream actors? If our work is subjected to criticism, we are fine with it. But it’s ridiculous, frustrating and insulting for us to hear that we have copied someone’s work."

The writer duo is now contemplating suing Vyas. “Right now, we are verifying the facts. Once we are done, we are, in all likelihood, going to file a defamation case. It’s amazing how people come up with such allegations at the last minute for their 15 minutes of fame.”

The Akshay Kumar-starrer social drama is set to be released on 11 August.