Krrazy 4 - The Rakesh Roshan version

Since I wrote against the Roshans in my yesterday's piece, I thought I should recreate this DNA story, which explains his version of the incident, for objectivity. Kudos to DNA for this interview.

‘Ram Sampat has no morals!’
Shubha Shetty-Saha - DNA
Friday, April 11, 2008 23:59 IST
Rakesh and Hrithik Roshan are upset with the way they were arm-twisted at the last moment by the musician and say they would have fought back to save their reputation, if they had enough time .

Rakesh Roshan is seething with anger over reports of being a song thief of sorts. For those uninitiated, a till now a little known musician Ram Sampath sued the Roshans for plagiarising his music for an item number in Krrazy 4 and managed to get Rs 2 crore from them in an out of court settlement.


The senior Roshan says, “Our intentions were never dishonorable. We liked the song, took permission from Sony Ericsson (the copy of which is printed alongside), then suddenly we come to know that someone is taking legal action against us for using the music.
At that moment, Ericsson tells us that they are not the legal owners of the tune! I was in a Catch 22 situation. There was no time to take any action because my movie was getting released the next day.


How could we even hire a lawyer and plan within three days? We had too much at stake because we couldn’t possibly let down our distributors and buyers by postponing the release. All these years our dealings have been honest. How can anyone even say that we have done dirty dealings?”


Roshan is also upset that they have been accused of being immoral. He says, “Ram Sampat has no morals! He knew about this in February since we started playing the promos of the SRK version.


He could have come and met me and sorted this out. Contrary to his claims, he never ever even approached us. In fact, when Hrithik came to know about it, he sent a clean message to Sampath and this was just about three days back when we were still under the impression that Sony Ericsson were the owners of the tune.”


When asked if Rajesh Roshan’s claim that it was his original work that did them in, Rakesh says, “ It is a five-minute song which Rajesh has composed, out of which just about 24 seconds is being taken from the ad, for which we had taken the permission. So what is wrong if Rajesh claimed it as his song?”


Finally, he says ruefully, “I would have continued fighting only if I had some time!”