Another case of plagiarism filed against Rajinikant-starrer 'Linga'

Chennai: Another case of plagiarism was filed against Tamil superstar Rajinikant-starrer film Linga in a city civil court on Friday, two days after a similar case was dismissed by the Madras High Court.

In his petition, Sakthivel claimed that he had written the storyline for a film Uyir Anai tracing the life of Pennyquick, the British engineer behind the construction of Mullaiperiyar.
He claimed that though many directors listened to the storyline, they were hesitant as the budget would be huge for the film.

Observing that he came to know through media reports that Lingaa was loosely based on Pennyquick, he said since it was his story and sought stay on the release of the film.

When the matter came up for hearing, the judge of the Additional City Civil Court ordered issuing of notice to the film's director K S Ravikumar, producer Venkatesh and story writer Ponkumar and further posted the case for December 9.

The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court had on December 3 dismissed a plea seeking a stay on the release of "Lingaa" saying merits of the rival claims made by parties that they owned the story cannot be investigated in summary proceedings in a writ petition.

The court said even without knowing or attempting to know the exact story line of "Lingaa", the petitioner had ventured to file the present plea on a mere guess and surmise with an intention to gain undue publicity for himself and hold respondents to ransom and make illegal gain out of it. "Lingaa" is scheduled to release on Rajinikant's birthday on December 12.