udta-punjab-faces-plagiarism-allegations-anurag-kashyap-shocked

Months after its release, plagiarism allegations against Udta Punjab, a film on widespread drug abuse in Punjab, seem to have come as much of a bolt from the blue for the producers as well as the viewers. "I don't have anything to say. I am completely shocked by the same, haven't read the book," Anurag Kashyap, one of the producers, told The Hindu.

Kashyap earlier lead from the front in the film's battle against the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC).

A recent media report pointed out High Society, a 2002 novel by Ben Elton, as a possible inspiration for the film and an article in a news website nailed it further by detailing the striking similarities between certain characters, situations, plot points and devices used in the novel and consequently in the film as well.

What changes is the setting and the socio-political context " how it sheds light on the havoc drugs are wreaking in Punjab. "I know for a fact that my director and writer went and spent a lot of time in Punjab researching the film, and have seen the research. If they were in any way inspired by the book, which only they know, they have done a damn good job in the writing of the script. Because the film that I read and I saw, seemed very very rooted in the land," said Kashyap.

The film's writer, Sudip Sharma, while admitting to having read the book, said he couldn't remember much of it and pointed out Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and an article in Tehelka as his inspirations.

Plagiarism is not new to Bollywood. Just a few years ago a post on a blog had gone viral for detailing the scene-by-scene lifts from foreign films in Anurag Basu's Barfi.

The director of the film, Abhishek Chaubey, did not respond to our queries.

Ye bhi copied thi.😆

Plot summary[edit]

It also follows several other characters:

• Tommy Hanson. Tommy Hanson is Britain's most successful musical artist and became famous after winning Pop Hero (ostensibly a reference to Pop Idol). He is an abuser of several drugs and narrates his story to people at hisNA and AA meetings. His character is possibly inspired by Robbie Williams, whose name is mentioned several times in the novel.
• Jessie. Jessie is a seventeen-year-old Scottish girl who, after running away from home to London, was coerced into prostitution. The story follows her battle to escape her pimp and her battle against her drug addiction.
• Commander Barry Leman, a high ranking police officer who becomes obsessed with a personal quest for justice when a friend of his daughter's is horrifically sexually assaulted (and subsequently commits suicide) as a way of threatening him over his involvement with Peter Paget's campaign.
• Emily Hilton-Smith, a drug-addicted socialite who publicly renounces drug use and joins Paget's campaign after the events of a night out force her to confront her addiction.
• Samantha Spencer, Paget's beautiful but psychologically unhinged mistress.
• Sonia, a teenage drug mule imprisoned in a Thai jail.