Dipak Shakya as the protagonist in BOB (L), and Manoj Bajpayee in a still from Kriti

Shirish Kunder's by-now viral short film Kriti has invited allegations of plagiarism from Nepali filmmaker Aneel Neupane.

Kriti, the psychological thriller by Shirish Kunder (director of Joker and Jaan-E-Mann) starring Manoj Bajpayee, Radhika Apte and Neha Sharma (2010's Crook) was uploaded on YouTube on Wednesday (June 22). Since then, it has got more than 1.1 million views.

However, today, independent filmmaker from Nepal Aneel Neupane wrote in a Facebook post, tagging Shirish Kunder, that Kunder stole the plot of Kriti from Aneel's short film BOB.

Neupane wrote, "I woke up to find Kriti (http://bit.ly/28RiRXB) on youtube. Initially, I thought maybe the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a co-incidence. I was actually excited to watch a short film starring Mr. Manoj Bajpayee (A great actor whom I admire a lot!) and Neha sharma (whom I"ve had a HUGE crush on ever since I saw her in the movie Crook). As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities. (sic)"

ALSO READ: Kriti Movie Review



Neupane continued in his post, "Now, I have no idea how to go about on this. I'm angry not because Mr. Shirish Kunder practically stole the plot and made it into his film. I'm angry because We didn't even have lunch money while shooting BOB, and a spot boy for Kriti probably made more money than BOB's entire budget. My team and I didn't work our asses off just so some rich dude from India could turn it into this and get away with it. That's just not fair. (sic)"

Meanwhile, numerous people on Facebook have taken it upon themselves to judge who copied from whom. Several people have posted messages under the hashtag '#KritiStoleBOB' on the social networking platform.

Kunder, in response, tweeted the following clarification:

About their claims of a private Vimeo link shared with close friends on October 2015: I'm not even their friend. Let alone close friend. Shirish Kunder (@ShirishKunder) June 24, 2016

In the Facebook post, Neupane wrote that they had BOB ready by 2015's October but hadn't released it publicly. It was a private video on Vimeo meant for "close friends".

BOB was finally uploaded on YouTube on May 12, this year. However, Kunder claims that Kriti was ready by February, 2016.

Here, watch Kriti and BOB and decide for yourselves: