Kiran Rao's directorial return, Laapataa Ladies, was a hit at the theatres when it released on March 1, and now that the film has dropped on OTT, it has been receiving all the more love and appreciation. But as the makers and cast of the film bask in its success, filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan has made some shocking claims and has stated that several scenes in the film are copied from his own 1999 movie.
Mahadevan, who has worked with Aamir in multiple films during his initial days, stated that Laapataa Ladies has picked up many 'establishing scenes' from his 1999 film, Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol, that starred Joy Sengupta, Vishal Varma, Neha Pendse and Sucheta Khanna in lead roles.
He stated that the beginning of Laapataa Ladies is the same as Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol. "In our film, a boy from the city goes to his village to get married. The mix-up happens at the railway station when he asks his new bride, who is in a ghunghat, to wait on a bench (while he goes looking for some information). When he returns, he joins the wrong bride," he explained.
He, however, added that the story from thereafter is different in Laapataa Ladies, but again, another scene, where the cop could not identify a woman from her photo because she was under a veil, was lifted from his film, Ananth claimed.
And if that wasn't all, Ananth claimed that Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol was available on YouTube until a while ago, but it has now "mysteriously disappeared" from the internet.
Ananth stated that he did not reach out to Aamir or Kiran regarding the matter as he knew they would point out the differences in the story. He also said that he has no proof since his film is not available on YouTube anymore.
"I’ll treat it as flattery more than anything else," he added.
Kiran Rao is yet to react to the claims by Ananth.
Laapataa Ladies has become one of the highest rated films of the year as per critics and fans' reviews. It stars Pratibha Ranta, Nitanshi Goel, Sparsh Shrivastava, Ravi Kishan, Satendra Soni, Chhaya Kadam, and others in key roles.
