Weeks before its release, Vijay's Sarkar has found itself in the midst of a plagiarism controversy with Varun Rajendran, a writer who claims that director AR Murugadoss has copied his script for Sengol.
Sarkar is touted to be an action thriller film and AR Murugadoss has written the script for it in collaboration with Jeyamohan. The movie revolves around the story of a CEO of a multi-national company, who returns to India to cast his vote in the election. What happens when he finds out that someone else has cast the vote forms the crux of the flick.
However, Varun Rajendran has reportedly filed a complaint against AR Murugadoss with the South Indian Film Writers Association (SIFWA). In his complaint, he claimed that he wrote the script for Sengol and registered it with the Writers Association in 2007.
He recently came to know that the plot of Sarkar is similar to his story. He also stated that he had narrated the script to Vijay's father SA Chandrasekhar.
Having accepted his complaint, the SIFWA formed a team to investigate the plagiarism complaint and Bhagyaraj, president of the union, is reportedly heading this team. "We have received a complaint from a member of our union. A team is looking into the issue. As of now, there are no updates on the situation." Silverscreen quoted a spokesperson for the writers' union as saying.
Sarkar is slated to hit the screens on November 6 and the film unit is now busy with its publicity. The team has kept mum on the issue. "The film is based on a real life incident and is completely a fresh script," the spokesperson told Silverscreen.
It should be noted that AR Murugadoss has a history of plagiarism. In 2004, he was accused of copying the story of Christopher Nolan's film Memento for Ghajini. Minjur Gopi had filed a case against him alleging that the story of Kaththi (2014) was a copy of his script, but had withdrawn the case later.
Ilayathalapathy Vijay and Keerthy Suresh are playing the lead roles, while Varalaxmi Sarathkumar, Yogi Babu and Radha Ravi essay pivotal roles in Sarkar, which is bankrolled by Kalanithi Maran. AR Rahman has composed music for the film and its promos have struck a chord with the viewers.
