Tania Sarcar, a student of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences (WBNUJS) has sent in this very interesting post on the latest round of copyright battles in Bollywood. It involved Anu Malik (image from here) accusing Pritam Chakraborty of copyright infringement – pot calling the kettle black? Read on…..
Whose ‘Character’ is actually ‘Dheela’?
by Tania Sarcar
Music composer Annu Malik has accused Pritam Chakraborty, who is currently the most sought after composer in the Hindi Film Industry, of plagiarism for the song “Character Dheela Hai” which is a part of the soundtrack of the film Ready, starring Salman Khan. (available on You Tube over here) Anu Malik claims that the song is a copy of his composition of “Mohabbat naam hai kiska” from the 2001 Akshaye Kumar, Kareena Kapoor starrer Ajnabee. (available on You Tube over here) This accusation, if proved, will be a gross violation of the Copyright Act 1957, which protects the composer from such plagiarism.
Anu Malik claimed that “the full tempo, the full tune has been taken and ripped off” from his song. Pritam has previously also been accused of a number of cases of plagiarism. Pritam has also been accused of using the phrase “Character Dheela” for his song. To this Pritam has replied saying that “Character Dheela” has been in the public domain for a really long time and the composed has even put together a legal team to look into the numerous plagiarism cases that he has been accused of.
It will be ironic to note here that Anu Malik doesn’t have a blemish free record of music composition. The music director all through his flourishing career, has been involved in a number of plagiarism cases where he has been said to lift music completely from various albums all over the world. Acting on the complaint of Bangladesh based band “Miles”, the Calcutta High Court has directed Mr. Malik to remove the song “Jana jana jana” from the soundtrack of Murder(2004). The band claimed that it was a plagiarism of one of their tunes from a 1997 album.
Coming back to the present case, Annu Malik has decided to take legal opinion and then decide on an action against Pritam.
