Jiya Jaye plagiarism case: Palash Sen issues statement on filmmaker Bhargav Saikia’s legal notice

Palash Sen gave his explanation on the plagiarism case on Facebook.

A few days ago, Euphoria frontman Palash Sen was slapped with a legal notice by filmmaker Bhargav Saikia in relation to his debut short film, Jiya Jaye. Now, Palash Sen and Euphoria has given their explanation on the entire scenario calling it a move by the filmmaker to gain publicity.
In a long post on Euphoria’s verified Facebook account, the band wrote, ” On Thursday, around 9 pm we received a legal notice via email which quite preposterously asked us to reply within 2 hours that night itself. Anyway we read the notice .. it said that we had used 3 shots in our film – of a flying bird, a tree and birds sitting on a ledge, which were from a film shot in 2012. We asked our editor about these shots and he replied these were in the public domain since April 2016. He got them in a folder called Stock which is in his possession and he used them to show ambience.”

“We started our investigation and found out that the footage was indeed available in a folder called STOCK. We used it without any wrong intent or malice. We are first time filmmakers making a short film. Euphoria is known to have NEVER violated copyrights and were ourselves victims at various points. Making such a public noise made us wonder what was this guy looking for.. Was it publicity that he never got when his film released (We too just heard the name of his film) or money.. or attention.. ? we suspect this footage was put out in the public domain and the intent was malicious,” the post read.

The entire post ended with a statement that read, “The matter is being discussed by our respective lawyers. WE are prepared for all actions. Haar maanna nahin jaante hum.”

The filmmaker, on the other hand, told IANS that the few scenes mentioned are re-used shots from ‘Kaafiron Ki Namaaz’ without permission from his production company, Lorien Motion Pictures. He also says one of those shots from ‘Kaafiron Ki Namaaz’ has also been re-used in the music video “Jiya Jaye Na”, released on Euphoria’s official YouTube channel and Facebook page. According to Saikia, the story of ‘Jiya Jaye’ is set in Kashmir, but he believes it has been shot in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh.