A police complaint was filed on Wednesday by Priya and Sandiip Kapur, the producers of Swara Bhaskar starrer "Anaarkali of Aarah", regarding some leaked scenes of the film. They suspect a team member to be the culprit.
The complaint was filed at the Malviya Nagar police station here.
"We suspect that a few critical scenes of the film have released in digital and social media platforms. These have been on media for at least three days. This act is criminal in intent and aimed at sabotaging the film and ensuring that the producer loses the investment of Rs 6 crore made on this film," read a copy of the police complaint.
"Anaarkali of Aarah" revolves around an erotic singer (Swara) from Arrah in Bihar, who sings double meaning songs. One day things take an ugly turn when Anarkali has a confrontation with a very powerful man who molested her and instead of bowing down she chooses to fight back.
"I am not sure about the person (who leaked the scenes), so I don't want to name anybody, but there is a very senior member of the team who might have done it -- it can be an actor or director of the film," Sandiip told IANS.
"Out of three scenes which have been leaked, only one scene was the one that the censor board asked us to cut out... So it has not gone out from the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification) for sure," Sandiip said.
"I got calls from a lot of people today (Wednesday) morning. We were shocked after hearing it. Something like this is really not good for independent producers like us," he added.
The trailer of the film, which is directed by Avinash Das, released last week.
One of the clips, which has been doing the rounds of the internet, shows Swara in a bold avatar. The censor board asked that the scene be cut.
"The police is taking action now. Even I have applied on YouTube to take down all those scenes. They will stop it soon. Some of the sites have removed the scenes already. Our team is working on that," Sandiip said.
"Piracy has really become a very serious issue for the industry," he rued.
The film, also featuring actors Pankaj Tripathi and Sanjay Mishra, is slated to release on March 24.
