Kamal Jain dismisses plagiarism allegations and pending dues
Himesh Mankad (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 19, 2018)

Kangana Ranaut and the entire team of Manikarnika - The Queen of Jhansi launched the three-minute 20-second-long trailer of the film with a lot of fanfare on December 18 in Mumbai. The film, which revives one of the proudest chapters of Indian history, has been getting a lot of raves for its grandeur and hard-hitting dialogues. However, as has been the case for all big films, this period drama has also found naysayers.

Mudassar Aziz, who last directed Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi, was among those who had an issue with a dialogue from the trailer, pointing out that it is the exact same as the one in Mohenjo Daro’s trailer and also the film. “Never a nice feeling. ‘Farq yeh hai ki tujhe raj karna hai aur mujhe seva!’ Hope it’s a coincidence and so it’s never too late to correct it! Please,” he tweeted.

The Manikarnika trailer ends with Kangana saying, “Jhansi aap bhi chahte hain, aur main bhi, fark sirf itna hai aapko raaj karna hai, aur mujhe apno ki seva.” In Ashutosh Gowarikar’s fantasy adventure, Hrithik Roshan had mouthed the same dialogue.

When we contacted Kamal Jain, the producer of Manikarnika, he said dismissively, “No one has a copyright on dialogue. It is a common dialogue, and the similarity is just a coincidence. Everybody wants to take mileage, attaching their name to a film as big as Manikarnika.”

Another tweet which grabbed attention was that by German model Andy Von Eich, who claims to have acted in Manikarnika but complains that he has yet to received full payment from the producers. Kamal was quick to shrug the allegations, “It’s absolutely false, all dues have been cleared. Anybody can go and tweet about such a big film, everybody is putting out random stuff on Twitter these days.”