Following the plagiarism charges levelled against Sarkar and its director AR Murugadoss, the Madras High Court will hear the case filed by writer-assistant director Varun Rajendran tomorrow. Varun, who claimed that Murugadoss had stolen his script – Sengol – to make Sarkar, has sought a ban on the release of the film.
When Murugadoss denied the claims made by Varun, he submitted a complaint to the South Indian Writers Association earlier this year, alleging that the director of Sarkar plagiarised his script registered with SWAN in 2007. He also said that he’d narrated the script to actor Vijay’s father SA Chandrasekhar.
Bhagyaraj, President of SWAN, was leading the efforts to determine if Rajendran’s accusations were true, and finding similarities between the two scripts, he, along with the Union, decided to back Varun in his legal case against AR Murugadoss.
Varun filed a petition in the Madras High Court requesting a ban on the film’s release until he’s given due credit along with a remuneration of Rs 30 lakh for his story. The court has now asked the film’s director and producers to file their response by October 30.
The Sarkar team, meanwhile, remains optimistic that the case will be decided in their favour, calling Varun’s allegations ‘unfounded and baseless’. “The film is based on something that late actor and politician MG Ramachandran faced at a point in his life. It’s ludicrous to claim that the script is a copy,” the spokesperson said.
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Sarkar features Vijay in the role of a CEO (Sundar) of a multi-national company who comes back to India to vote in the upcoming elections. While doing so, he finds out that someone else has cast a vote in his name.
Produced by Sun Pictures, the music for the film is scored by Oscar-winning composer AR Rahman, with cinematography by Girish Gangadharan. Scheduled to release this Deepavali, it also features Keerthy Suresh and Varalaxmi Sarathkumar in lead roles, with Arjun Sarja, Prem Kumar, Yogi Babu, Radha Ravi, and Pala Karuppiah in pivotal roles.