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Fan tribute to Sridevi plagiarised? Boney Kapoor says absolutely not
Fans of the late Bollywood diva Sridevi were moved by the beautiful tribute video presented in her honour at the 19th International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards 2018, which took place on June 24 in Thailand’s Siam Niramit, and was aired on TV this Sunday. But for one of her fans, the video came as a rude shock.
Saba Arif, an ardent Sridevi fan, turned on the TV to catch a glimpse of the tribute, and was taken aback when she realised that it was the one she had put together way back in March, days after Sridevi accidentally drowned in the bathtub of her hotel room in Dubai.
Saba immediately took to social media and alleged that the IIFA organisers had ripped off her tribute created for Sridevi and called it their own.
We reached out to Saba, and this is what she had to say: “I am a huge fan of Sridevi and her demise came as a shock to me. I love Sridevi, and thus decided to make this video in March. Something I felt that other fans would love to watch. Watching it being used with just a few alterations during the IIFA Awards show was shocking, to say the least. Nobody from the company had contacted me, and nobody even bothered to acknowledge that the video was, indeed, a creation of mine.” The 24-yearold added that she’d appreciate it if she was acknowledged for the video and wanted an apology from the company for “plagiarising” her work.
BONEY RESPONDS
On digging deeper, we found out that the tribute video wasn’t a creation of the IIFA team and was given to them by the late Sridevi’s husband, film producer Boney Kapoor. When contacted, Boney denied any plagiarism and rather pointed out: “Almost all of the clips in the video are owned by me or Yash Raj Films, thus, giving us the right to use them as we like. The video was approved by me for IIFA, after a discussion with YRF, and I’d like to know what gives her (Saba Arif) the right to claim it as her own. If she has a problem with the video, she should reach out to me rather than make such accusations.”
But, Saba doesn’t agree with Boney on this. When we tell her what he has said, she replies, “Sure, the clips are his to own. But I put my heart and soul into this video — it took me three days to make it. They didn’t change the sequences of the clips or the song(s), and the fact that I had put all that together makes the concept my intellectual property. This was never about the same clips being used, but about my hard work being taken for such a show without any acknowledgement. It is still my video, and I’d like to be acknowledged for the same.”