Malayalam filmmaker Major Ravi was ordered by a commercial court in Kerala to pay Rs 30 lakh on the charges of plagiarising the screenplay of his film ‘Karmayodha’. The amount was compensation to writer Reji Mathew, who filed the copyright lawsuit. He alleged that the screenplay and dialogues used in the movie resembled his original story. He claimed that the consent to use was not taken, and the film was released without any due accreditation or remuneration.
In the case, Reji Mathew v Major AK Raveendran & others, the judgement came on November 21 by the Kottayam Commercial Court by Judge Manish DA. The court found the lack of an original script and screenplay as a direct indicator of plagiarism. It was found that the defence did not have a case that could deny the similarity of characters, screenplay, and dialogue.
The similarities between Mathew’s original work and the film were not merely incidental but amounted to substantial copying, the Court ruled.
What led to the Reji Mathew case?
As per a Bar and Bench report, the suit alleged that Major Ravi or Major AK Raveendran approached Mathew in 2011 to develop a screenplay. Centred around the subject of human trafficking, Mathew completed the work and shared the script with Ravi. However, despite suggesting the title ‘Karmayodha’, the project was stalled.
Later, he found from several media reports, that a Malayalam film with a similar storyline had started its production. Mathew claimed that Major Ravi had credited himself as the writer for Karmayodha, which was released a year later.
After the careful analysis of the two scripts, the court ruled in favour of Mathew. The makers of Karmayodha were, in return, asked to pay Rs 30 lakh in damages. Ravi’s argument that the film developed from a one-line story was nullified, too.
Final judgement on Karmayodha’s plagiarism
“The defendants have violated the authorship and copyright of the plaintiff in his literary work. It is held that the plaintiff is the owner of the authorship right and copyright of the story, script and screenplay of the movie Karmayodha. He is entitled to a declaration as such,” the Court observed.
Ravi and other defendants were permanently restrained from exhibiting, remaking, dubbing, reproducing the film or its content without attributing authorship to Reji. They gave the makers a time period of two months to pay him the amount.