Director Indra Kumar and producer Ashok Thakeria have landed in the middle of an alleged Rs 1.50 crore fraud case over the rights of their 2007 film Dhamaal. The case made headlines recently after an FIR was allegedly registered against the duo on August 17. The FIR was filed following a complaint by Vikas Baldevraj Sahni, the owner of a Mumbai-based film distribution company named Grand Master.
Maruti International breaks silence on Dhamaal row
After the reports surfaced, Ashok Thakeria’s Maruti International has issued a statement regarding the rights of the 2007 film Dhamaal. The statement read, “We are currently in discussions with the concerned party and the matter regarding the rights will be resolved mutually after further discussions.”
About the Dhamaal 4 dispute
This comes after an NDTV report suggested that Vikas Baldevraj Sahni claimed that his company had entered into an agreement with Maruti International, which is associated with Thakeria. The deal signed on October 15, 2019, allegedly involved the worldwide distribution, digital rights and copyrights of the 2007 comedy film, Dhamaal, starring Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi, Jaaved Jaaferi and Riteish Deshmukh. The distribution deal was reportedly locked at Rs 1.50 crore.
In his complaint, Sahni has alleged that he was initially assured that the film’s rights had not previously been sold to another party. However, it was later that he discovered that the lifetime OTT and digital rights had allegedly already been sold to Shemaroo Entertainment in 2015, which was four years before the agreement with his company, Grand Master.
Sahni further went on to claim that in January 2020, a representative of Maruti International informed him about an existing agreement with Shemaroo, which reportedly covered the film’s rights for its lifetime. Additionally, a supplementary agreement was also subsequently signed between Maruti International and Shemaroo in October 2020, as per Sahni.
Meanwhile, Sahni’s Grand Master had also applied for cinematograph copyright in March 2020. The complainant alleged that the Copyright Office subsequently issued the company a copyright certificate, CF-5230/2023, dated April 28, 2023.
Dhamaal was originally released in September 2007 and turned out to be a cult classic film. Recently, a fourth instalment of the film, Dhamaal 4, was released, headlined bu Ajay Devgn.