Law Suit Against Ashutosh Gowariker For Stealing Panipat By Writer Vishwas Patil

Jyothi Venkatesh

Prominent Marathi writer Mr. Vishwas Patil, who is very famous for his novel Panipat, as a Panipatkar, yesterday filed a commercial IP Suite GB GB (1247of 2019),in Mumbai High Court against the release of the forthcoming Hindi Movie Panipat.

Mr. Patil has filed suite against Ashutosh Gowariker Productions, producer Rohit Shelatkar, producer Sunita Gowariker and Reliance Entertainment for injunction and compensation. It is the case of Mr. Patil that the major essence, characters and portion of his very famous novel Panipat and play ‘Ranangan’ is stolen and lifted by the producer of this film without Mr. Patil’s permission and approval.

Mr Patil received Sahitya Academy Award in 1992. His other novels ‘Mahanayak’ and ‘A Dirge for the Damned’ (Zadazadti),  are very famous.

Panipat novel was firstly published in Marathi in 1988 and in Hindi in 1991 by India’s premier literary Institute, Bharatiya Jnanpith. Later on, the same novel was published in Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada and other languages. So far around 3 lakh copies are sold out in Indian and foreign languages.

On the same novel, Mr. Patil wrote a play namely ‘Ranangan’ and it was first performed in 1999. It was directed by NSD’s famous director, Waman Kendre and the costumes were designed by Bhanu Athaiya who has also designed costumes for the English movie Gandhi and received an Oscar award for the same.

Later on, around 400 shows of ‘Ranangan’ in Marathi and Hindi language were performed at Delhi, Jabalpur,Goa, Hyderabad and other cities.

Prior to Panipat novel of 1988, this battle was never considered in history and Maharashtra also as a point of pride or valour. But, Mr. Patil did enormous research for 8 years and gave a  new dimension to this battle and firstly projected Bhau Saheb as a great commander of the Marathas. Immediately the novel received huge success and appreciation and lakhs of copies were sold out and Mr. Patil was honoured as ‘Panipatkar’ (maker of Panipat) by the people of Maharashtra.

Mr Rohit Shelatkar through his representatives met a script writer, Mr. Sanjay Patil at Cannes Film Festival. Mr. Sanjay wrote the screenplay and the reading was held at Mr. Shelatkar’s Mumbai office in his presence. Mr. Sanjay wrote his script based on Vishwas Patil’s work by his approval. Later on, the filmmaker’s conveniently left Mr. Sanjay also.

After watching Panipat’s trailer, Mr. Vishwas Patil got shocked that the heart and soul of his creation is stolen and lifted by the film producers and the director. Therefore, he knocked the doors of the Bombay High Court.

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Tags: Bollywood, Bollywood News, Bollywood Updates, Television, Telly News, Ashutosh Gowariker, Panipat, Writer Vishwas Patil