Kiran Rao’s directorial comeback, “Laapataa Ladies,” made a significant impact at the box office upon its March 1 release, and its recent arrival on OTT platforms has only heightened its acclaim. However, amidst the celebration of the film’s success, filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan has raised eyebrows by alleging that several scenes in “Laapataa Ladies” are plagiarized from his 1999 movie.
Ananth Mahadevan, who collaborated with Aamir Khan on multiple projects during their early careers, asserted that “Laapataa Ladies” borrows numerous ‘establishing scenes’ from his film “Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol,” featuring Joy Sengupta, Vishal Varma, Neha Pendse, and Sucheta Khanna.
He highlighted similarities in the opening sequences of both films, where a city boy, in Mahadevan’s film, heads to his village for marriage, leading to a mix-up at the railway station where he inadvertently switches brides. While the initial setup mirrors “Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol,” Mahadevan clarified that the subsequent narratives diverge, with his film exploring the love story between the swapped couples, unlike “Laapataa Ladies,” which delves into the journey of self-discovery for its female leads.
Ananth, in a new interview stated, “I have seen Laapataa Ladies, and the beginning as well as many incidents are the same. 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.”
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However, the story that follows thereafter varies from Aamir Khan’s Laapataa Ladies. Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol tells the story of the couple falling in love with their swapped partners whereas Laapataa Ladies revolves around the two women finding their true motives in life.
Ananth added, “The scene where the cop looks at the woman’s photograph and can’t make out much because she is in a ghunghat, is there in my film. Except in my film, it’s not a cop but another character. The director added that his film was available on YouTube until a while ago but it has been mysteriously disappeared.
“I don’t have any proof if Laapataa Ladies’ writer has seen my film on YouTube. When I searched for my movie on YouTube, it had disappeared and that’s when I realised that it was pulled down. I didn’t reach out to Aamir [Khan, producer] or Kiran because they will only point out the differences. But the premise, situations and a lot of scenes are similar. The mix-up in the train and railway station, and the ghunghatwala photo are straight from my film. I’ll treat it as flattery more than anything else,” he said.
Mahadevan further noted resemblances in scenes where a character struggles to identify a woman due to her ghunghat, although in his film, it’s not a police officer but another character in the scene. He mentioned that his film was previously available on YouTube but has since vanished under mysterious circumstances.
Neither Aamir Khan nor Kiran Rao has responded to these allegations yet. “Laapataa Ladies” initially enjoyed a theatrical release in March before making its debut on Netflix.
