Hindi
Court orders Krazzy4 release with two songs cut
MUMBAI: Rakesh Roshan‘s film Krazzy4 will be released on Friday 11 April with its title track deleted.
Music composer Ram Sampath, who sought legal recourse for his 60-second music titled ‘The Thump‘ being copied as the title track of Krazzy 4, has also been granted interim relief of Rs 25,00,000 by the Mumbai High court on Thursday. Sampath had dragged Hrithik Roshan’s director father Rakesh Roshan and composer uncle Rajesh Roshan, to court, alleging that they have “directly lifted” his music for the Krazzy4 album, seeking damages of Rs 20 million.
The court instructed the Roshans to delete two songs if they want to release the film on Friday. While delivering the verdict, Justice Karnik of the Mumbai high court said, “To my untrained ear, the music appeared to be similar,” after listening to both Sampath‘s work for a Sony Ericsson cellphone advertisement, and the two songs composed by Rajesh Roshan for the film.
The verdict implies that the much hyped Hrithik Roshan number and Shah Rukh Khan‘s Break Free item numbers in the film will have to be removed, reports say. This is easier said than done as the film prints have already been dispatched for the overseas release, as well as territories outside Mumbai.
Sampath’s lawyer Virendra Tulzapurkar told the court that mere monetary compensation would not suffice, adding that “The SMS-s sent by Hrithik establish that they knew the music was not created by them. They have done this knowingly and deliberately,” reports say.
The lawyer also presented the opinion of Shiv Mathur, an independent expert, who confirmed Sampath’s allegation of plagiarism. Tulzapurkar added that the defendants were earning Rs 70 million per month simply from ringtone downloads and Rs 25 million per month from the sales of the music.
Sampath, 32, who has composed music for over 3,000 advertisements, music tracks of films like Khakee and Let’s Talk, and even done a remix for pop sensation Justin Timberlake, had filed a suit for copyright infringement in Bombay High Court. He alleged that four tracks from Krazzy4 were “direct lifts” from the music he had composed for an advertisement titled ‘Thump’ for Sony Ericsson phones in March 2007.
While Sampath remained unavailable for comment, his singer wife Sona Sampath said, “as the matter is subjudice, anything we say will affect us adversely. One individual against so many institutions is tough and we don‘t want to jeopardise the case , but believe the truth shall prevail.”
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
