Director Raghavendra Rao has accused the team behind Geetha Govindam of plagiarising his work. The noted filmmaker, at a recent award function, said that the core plot of the film seems to be a direct copy of his Telugu film, Pelli Sandadi.
The film was made in 1996 with Srikanth, Ravali and Deepthi Bhatnagar in lead roles. The story revolved around a young man, who hails from a family of musicians. As he tries hard to find the woman of his dreams, his family forces him to marry a girl from a neighbouring village. Later he finds out that his dream girl is his fiance’s sister. This film was remade in Hindi (Mere Sapno Ki Rani) with Sanjay Kapoor as the hero and in Tamil (Ninaithen Vandhai) with Vijay in the lead role.
Geetha Govindam has Vijay Deverakonda as a lecturer who wants a relationship like the one shared by Amrutha Valli and Senapathi (characters from the movie Indian) where one understands the other without a word being exchanged.
Geetha Govindam does not have much in common with the film that Raghavendra Rao made. But the director firmly believes that some form of plagiarism has happened. “If you look at it closely, my film’s hero has a dream girl that he wants to marry. In Geeta Govindam also, this is the same. The one line narration of both movies would be the same. Anything else is just masala that has been added to keep the movie engaging enough for the audience,” he told Silverscreen.
Recommended
The director is not interested in taking any action against Parasuram, the director of Geetha Govindam. “I just think that some credit where it is due would be great. If you look at it, most of the movies they make these days are rehash of the films from the eighties. So I guess it’s a trend or something. But when you rehash, you must thank the person who made the original. Imitation is a kind of respect, but giving credit is godliness,” he added.
The makers of Geetha Govindam chose not to comment on the issue.