Is Rashmi Sharma’s Roop plagiarised? Writer Shakti Singh accuses

MUMBAI: Rashmi Sharma Production’s Roop is making waves these days. The show has become a talk of the town due to its bold concept of a boy and his struggle with feminism. TellyChakkar had earlier reported about popular TV actors who had declined the project because of its courageous concept. Actors like Shashank Vyas and Shivin Narang were approached for the lead character but they didn’t give a positive nod.

The daily is once again mired in controversy. Shakti Singh, a former casting director who is getting into TV production and writing, has accused the show producers for plagiarizing his concept.

The concept of Roop, according to Shakti, is an exact replica of an idea that he along with his writer Lalit Kumar had derived. Shakti is currently working for his own production house Parnavi Pictures. Under the same production house, he was working on a project titled Pehchaan and registered the concept. The story revolved around a boy and his struggle with effeminacy.

Shakti shared the registration details of his show exclusively with TellyChakkar. As per the documents, his concept was registered on 4 February 2018.

Shakti further narrated that he along with his team had pitched a few concepts to Zee TV. His concepts were apparently declined by the heads, however, when they asked him if he had another concept, he verbally narrated them the concept of Pehchaan. Days later when Roop’s promo went on air, Singh was perplexed and infuriated. After watching a few episodes, Shakti realized that Roop had a stark similarity with Pehchaaan.

Sharing his ordeal, Singh exclusively told us, “On 1 March 2018, my writer Lalit Kumar and I went for a meeting with Zee Essel group to pitch some concepts. We had a meeting with their executives. Post the meeting, they asked us if we had another concept to pitch. At that point we said that we had not mailed any of it so they asked us to narrate them verbally. Cut to now the same concept is running on Colors TV with name ROOP-Mard Ka Naya Swaroop. We really don't know how this concept has been passed on. We are constantly trying to reach out to Rashmi Sharma Telefilms. We have dropped them mails asking to share us the date of their show’s registration. I want Rashmi Sharma Telefilms to reply to our mails since we've not got any response from them.”

Shakti has given us the screenshots of the emails that he had sent to the production house.

He further pleaded, “It’s a humble request to Rashmi Sharma Telefilms to take this matter into consideration, for the clarification on the details of the Roop concept.”

Shakti is yet to seek help from the law since he doesn’t know whether Roop’s concept was registered before his concept or not.

TellyChakkar tried contacting Producer Rashmi Sharma to get more details, however, despite constant calls and texts, we couldn’t explicitly get revert from Sharma over the plagiarism accusations till the time of filing this article. 

We hope Rashmi and Shakti sort this matter.