Emraan Hashmi's Cheat India accused of plagiarism by Delhi based actor-writer duo

According to a Mumbai Mirror, a daily tabloid, report, writer Dinesh Gautam and actor Imran Zahid have claimed that the storyline of Emraan Hashmi's upcoming film Cheat India is based on their own film, Marksheet.

Cheat India is produced by Atul Kasbekar's Ellipsis Entertainment. The duo say they had pitched the idea of the film to director Mahesh Bhatt while working on the play, Baat Niklegi Toh.

Gautam and Zahid also claim to have registed the script with the Screenwriters' Association in 2012.

The report quoted Dinesh as saying, "After Emraan Hashmi announced his film Cheat India in January, we filed an official complaint with the Writers Association. Now, we will be sending legal notices to the three producers as our grievances have not been acknowledged. The script may not have been copied verbatim, but the concepts and case studies used in the story are the same. We shared every bit of our story with Bhatt saab and everybody knows how small this industry is. It is an embarrassing situation."

The report quoted a source close to the production as saying, "While the title and story were registered around eight months ago, nobody knows what Cheat India is about as the script is not yet complete and the makers have not had any narrations," before adding, "No one can claim exclusivity or any copyright on case studies available on Google and Wikipedia. Anyone can make a film on any scam in the education system. May the best filmmaker win."

Cheat India is to be directed by filmmaker Soumik Sen. The film was announced in February earlier this year, and is scheduled to be released during the Republic Day weekend of 2019.