Two days after the Shirish Kunder-directed short film Kriti released to praise from Bollywood, a Nepali filmmaker has accused it of been plagiarized from his own short, BOB.
Kriti stars Radhika Apte, Manoj Bajpayee and Neha Sharma. It has been warmly welcomed on Twitter by celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, Abhishek Bachchan and Karan Johar.
In a post on Facebook, Kathmandu-based Aneel Neupane has alleged that Mr Kunder 'practically stole the plot' of BOB, which was released on Vimeo seven months ago.
"Initially, I thought maybe the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a co-incidence. I was actually excited to watch a short film starring Mr Manoj Bajpayee (A great actor whom I admire a lot!) and Neha Sharma (whom I've had a HUGE crush on ever since I saw her in the movie Crook). As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities," wrote Mr Neupane of Kriti.
"I'm angry because we didn't even have lunch money while shooting BOB, and a spot boy for Kriti probably made more money than BOB's entire budget. My team and I didn't work our asses off just so some rich dude from India could turn it into this and get away with it. That's just not fair," Mr Neupane wrote, adding that he didn't have the cash to 'take the fight to them.'
Is Kriti copied from BOB? The bare bones of the plot are certainly identical - a man consults a psychiatrist about whether his girlfriend exists outside of his mind or not?