High Court bells the copycat, bans blockbuster Poran Jay Joliya Re

Coming hard on plagiarism in cinema, the Calcutta High Court on Monday passed an interim order banning the screening of the Bengali film Poran Jay Joliya Re in cinema halls of the state.

The producer of Hindi blockbuster Namaste London, Vipul Shah, had moved the court seeking a ban on the Bengali film stating that it was an exact copy of his film and hence violated the copyright law.

Justice Nadira Patheriya, who passed today's order, had said last week that she wanted to see both the films.

The court on Monday also directed its producers to deposit the prints along with all the other documents relating to the film and the censor board certificate.

The film, at present, is being screened in 115 halls across the state. This is the first instance that a Bengali film has been dragged to the court for plagiarism and banned too.

Tilak Bose, the advocate for the Bengali film's producers Venkatesh Films, has sought a stay order from the Division Bench of Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghosh and IP Mukherjee. Bose said the film has raked up a collection of Rs 23 lakh across the 115 cinema halls on Sunday, and it would not be possible to implement the ban on all the halls. The Bench will hear the case on Tuesday.

The owners of the cinema halls, meanwhile, are feeling the heat and are now awaiting the Division Bench's response. Dwipen Mitra, owner of Mitra hall in north Kolkata, said if the Bench upholds today's decision, they would be forced to withdraw the film. "When we take a film for screening we see two things, first if it was passed by the censor board and second if it was registered by the Eastern India Motion Pictures Association (EIMPA)," said Mitra. "We have no idea about its story line or the plagiarism. If the film is banned, it will affect the lives of nearly 15,000-20,000 people who work at these halls," he added.

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