Shankar, the Tamil director who last helmed the 2018 film 2.0 starring Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar in the lead roles, said that the reports about a magistrate court issuing him a non-bailable warrant was incorrect.
The Endhiran director put out a statement on Tuesday stating that the reference to the warrant had occurred due to “a glitch in the online court reporting” and it has been rectified.
Earlier, reports said that the Egmore Metropolitan Magistrate Court II had issued a warrant after the director repeatedly failed to appear in court in connection with a 2010 plagiarism case.
Writer Aarur Tamilnandan had filed a complaint stating that Shankar’s 2010 science fiction film Endhiran was a copy of his 1996 short story Jiguba, which was published in a Tamil magazine. The story was republished as a full-fledged novel titled Dhik Dhik Deepika in 2007.
Tamilnandan had first filed a complaint in 2010 at the Madras High Court. In June 2019, Shankar approached the court to quash the petition. However, the court dismissed his plea and observed that there was a case against him. The court, however, held that the film’s producer Kalanithi Maran had nothing to do with the story.
Shankar then approached the Supreme Court, which also dismissed his appeal.
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In his complaint, Tamilnandan had stated that the plagiarism was a violation of the Copyright Act, 1957. He also alleged that the makers of the film had monetarily benefited from his idea. He had asked for Rs 1 crore as compensation, according to a report in The Times of India.
According to a report by the New Indian Express, the case has been ongoing in the magistrate court since 2017. However, neither Shankar nor his counsel has appeared in court.
Endhiran starred Rajinikanth, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Danny Denzongpa. The film, which released in Tamil, Telugu, and Hindi, remains one of the highest-grossing South Indian films of all time. It was produced by Sun Pictures and won three Filmfare Awards and two National Awards in the Special Effects and Production Design category. A sequel titled 2.0 was released in 2018.