Poet and lyricist Yahya Bootwala has accused Akshay Kumar’s Kesari Chapter 2 writer Sumit Saxena of plagiarism, claiming that a dialogue delivered by actress Ananya Panday in the film has been directly lifted from his poem Jallianwala Bagh, which was published five years ago on the YouTube channel UnErase Poetry.
In a strongly worded Instagram post, Yahya shared a side-by-side video featuring himself performing the poem and the corresponding scene from the film where Ananya delivers a nearly identical line. According to him, the similarity is far too precise to be coincidental.
“So @nisoooooooooorg sent me a clip 4 days back from the movie Kesari 2 of dialogues he felt were copied from my poem, titled Jallianwala Bagh, published 5 years ago on @unerasepoetry YouTube channel. Here are the two clips and honestly, this is a clear copy-paste,” he wrote.
Yahya further mentioned, “It’s not like they’ve tried to hide it as well, matlab phusphusana jaisa shabd bhi uthaya hai. Yes, logo ke khayal mil sakte hai, people can think in a similar way but kisi ek topic par bilkul ek jaisi lines likh dena is anything but a coincidence.”
Yahya criticised Sumit directly, writing, “As writers, the worst thing you can do to a fellow writer is pick their material up, blatantly use it without giving credits and this is what I feel dialogue writer @sumit.saxena.35912 has done here.”
In his Instagram story, the poet tagged the official Instagram account of Sumit and wrote, “I’m sure you know this, the worse you can do as a writer is steal some other writer’s work without crediting them for it.”
Yahya also tagged producer Karan Johar, director Karan Singh Tyagi as well as Akshay and Ananya and urged them to look into the matter.
However, neither the makers of Kesari 2 nor Sumit have released any official statement or clarification in response to the allegations at the time of publishing this article.
Meanwhile, Kesari 2 received rave reviews from critics and the audience. The film, which shows the lesser-known story of what happened after the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, hit the big screens on April 18.
The film stars Akshay Kumar as advocate C Sankaran Nair, who had sued the British government and had accused the Crown of ‘genocide’ post the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. On the other hand, Ananya is seen as lawyer Dilreet Gill.
