Shirish Kunder denies allegations that he plagiarised Kriti from Nepalese film

Director Shirish Kunder is fighting claims that his short film Kriti, starring Radhika Apte and Manoj Bajpayee and released online on 22 June, is a copy of a film called BOB made by Nepal-based Aneel Neupane.

On Friday, Neupane wrote a Facebook post in which he alleged that Kunder had "practically stolen the plot and made it into his film."

Neupane wrote (sic): "Yesterday (June 23, 2016), I woke up to find Kriti on youtube. Initially, I thought maybe the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a co-incidence... As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities."

Denying the allegation, Kunder said: "That short film (BOB) was released on 12 May whereas we shot Kriti in February, after which it was in post-production. How is it even possible to 'lift' the idea, unless I was time travelling?"

He added, according to NDTV: "These allegations are technically, factually and logically baseless."

In his Facebook post Neupane had said BOB had been released online in October, on a private link on Vimeo that had been shared with his friends.

Kunder said in response: "I am not even friends with the makers and the video was private. So how can I see it? I am not alleging anything against them but it seems like an act just to gain some publicity."