Like most biggies of the recent times, Akshay Kumar’s “Padman”, the film that has won rave reviews upon its worldwide release on Feb 9, also fallen prey to the plagiarism controversy. A budding writer named Ripu Daman Jaiswal has accused the makers of ‘PadMan’ of copying his story and lodged a police complaint.
Padman is based on the life of Tamil Nadu-based Arunachalam Muruganantham, who had made low cost sanitary pads for rural women.
Jaiswal alleged, “I had researched on the work of Muruganantham, written the script and registered it with Screen Writer Association before sending it to two big production houses – Karan johar’s Dharma productions and Phantom Films. Just ten days after I had sent my script, an announcement was made by Akshay Kumar’s wife Twinkle Khanna that she is producing a film based on Muruganantham’s life’.
‘I however waited till the film’s release to find out whether they copied my script or was it just a coincidence. Now, as I have seen the film, I can conclude that they copied my script as most of the scenes that I had written featured in the film. They even lifted the fictional characters I had created and also copied some of my dialogues as it is,’ he alleged.
The budding writer said that he would take the matter to court and fight a battle against the makers of Padman for allegedly plagiarizing his work.