Storm over the mystery pages

The extra-sensational story by Indranil Roy on Patrika (the Saturday supplement of Ananda Bazar Patrika) on 5th February has surely made the audience of Bangla meaningful cinema sit up and take notice, especially those who watched and liked Autograph. The story clearly hints at a suspicious resemblance of the script of Srijit’s new film, a thriller about a serial killer, to a script penned by noted film journalist Pratim D Gupta.

Those who follow Pratim may know about his script-writing, and an aspiration to make films one day. As per the story in Patrika Pratim penned a similar script years back and have been trying to make it into a film thereafter. In his script the killer’s victims are from the film industry. Pratim had even spoken to Rituparno Ghosh long back to make him act in a character from the film industry. As per Indranil’s story Rituparno noticed the similarities between the scripts after he heard Srijit’s. Prosenjit is playing one of the lead characters, of a police officer, in Srijit’s film. And he is one who has heard both scripts. He reportedly denied hearing Pratim’s script in full and maintained that he didn’t notice any similarity between Srijit’s script and whatever he heard from Pratim’s.

Pratim is obviously hurt, and refused a patch-up appeal from Srijit over phone. He might contemplate legal action if it is true that it’s his script that Srijit is going to film, despite clever changes as reported. The story also informs that one of such changes was shifting the victims from the film industry to the world of music, and Anjan Dutta was approached by Srijit to play such a character, but he refused because of the controversy.

The action has obviously spread to Facebook, where Roopa Ganguly has put up a sarcastic remark on her wall and rubbished the story in Patrika in Srijit’s favour, and also wondered how without proper evidence such a story can come up in a paper of Ananda Bazar Patrika’s repute. Srijit has commented in response to to his fan’s comments on the social networking site that he will take his stance when it’s time. Pratim has poured in his heart about his dream script having got hijacked by someone. Director Aniket Chattopadhyay, basking in the glory of ‘Bye Bye Bankok’, his January ’11 success, has pledged his support to Pratim.

Will be keen to follow the developments, and keep you posted. Watch this space.