Kiran Rao’s Laapataa Ladies has been winning hearts ever since it released on OTT. The low-budget film tells the tale of two brides who get exchanged in a train owing to their ghunghats. The film presents a hard-hitting reality about women and their rights. While the film is getting love from all, filmmaker Ananth Mahadevan claimed that Laapataa Ladies shares uncanny resemblance with his 1999 film, Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol. Ananth has worked with Aamir in a few of his initial films. These include Akele Hum Akele Tum, Ishq and Mann.
In a new interview, the filmmaker claimed that Kiron’s film has many establishing scenes which were originally seen in his film. Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol starred Joy Sengupta, Vishal Varma, Neha Pendse, and Sucheta Khanna. Speaking about the similarities between his film and Laapataa Ladies, Ananth said, “I have seen Laapataa Ladies, and the beginning as well as many incidents are the same. In our film, a boy from the city goes to his village to get married. The mix-up happens at the railway station when he asks his new bride, who is in a ghunghat, to wait on a bench [while he goes looking for some information]. When he returns, he joins the wrong bride.”
However, the story that follows thereafter is different from Laapataa Ladies. Ghunghat Ke Pat Khol unfolds the story of the couple falling in love with their swapped partners whereas Laapataa Ladies revolves around the two women finding their true motives in life.
“The scene where the cop looks at the woman’s photograph and can’t make out much because she is in a ghunghat, is there in my film. Except in my film, it’s not a cop but another character,” he said. The director added that his film was available on YouTube until a while ago but it has been mysteriously disappeared.
“I don’t have any proof if Laapataa Ladies’ writer has seen my film on YouTube. When I searched for my movie on YouTube, it had disappeared and that’s when I realised that it was pulled down. I didn’t reach out to Aamir [Khan, producer] or Kiran because they will only point out the differences. But the premise, situations and a lot of scenes are similar. The mix-up in the train and railway station, and the ghunghatwala photo are straight from my film. I’ll treat it as flattery more than anything else,” he said.
Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao are yet to address the claims. Laapataa Ladies was a theatrical release. The film released on the big screen in March and recently debuted on Netflix.
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