Writer threatens legal action against Mirzapur 2

Hindi crime-fiction novelist Surendra Mohan Pathak has threatened legal action against the makers of Amazon Prime Video series Mirzapur 2 for allegedly misrepresenting his novel Dhabba as “sheer porno”.

In the third episode of Season 2, veteran actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda’s Satyanand Tripathi is shown reading Pathak’s Dhabba but the voiceover has nothing to do with what is written in the novel, published in 2010, the author alleged in a letter, dated October 27.

“What the character has been depicted reading from Dhabba has absolutely no bearing with any part of the original text of Dhabba and also there is no character bearing the name Baldev Raj in the novel in the said context.

“On the contrary, what is being read is sheer porno, the undersigned cannot even dream of writing, supposedly to titillate the viewers. But in the process, the whole sequence is shown as an excerpt from my novel Dhabba which amounts to mischievous misrepresentation,” Pathak, 81, claimed in his letter shared on his Twitter account.

One of the most well-known crime fiction authors in the Hindi belt, Pathak alleged that this misrepresentation was an “attempt to tarnish” his image of over five decades.

When contacted, Pathak said he received a call from the writers of the show promising that the voiceover will be removed from the show.

“I spoke to them today. They have promised me to remove the voiceover and issue an apology but they are yet to do that. The writers said they are an admirer of my work so I told them they should not have done this. The film industry is such that if you don’t stop one, many others start doing that,” he said.—PTI

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.