Hindi
Debunking plagiarism Rajkumar Gupta: “Gunchakkar script is co-written by Parvez Sheikh”
BENGALURU: Denying plagiarism, the soon to be released Hindi film Gunchakkar director Rajkumar Gupta said that the story belonged to a writer named Parvez Sheikh who had co-written the script. Gupta said that Sheikh had narrated the script to him way back in 2008.
According to reports, Dhirender Kumar who hails from Nepal, alleged that the story ofGhunchakkar was similar to the one for which he had penned a script in 2010-11. Kumar, who claims to have registered the script, filed a complaint with the Film Writers Association on May 20, has sent a legal notice to the production house UTV Motion Pictures, and requested a High Court stay for its slated release date of 28 June 2013.Reacting strongly to queries, Gupta questioned Kumar’s silence for such a long time – the trailer of the film was released more than three months ago. He said “It’s strange that people always get up and claim that the story is theirs and file cases in the week before which a film is to be released. Collectively, as an industry we should be going against such people to court. This claim is absolutely false.”
Refusing to comment further on the counteraction measures, he said that the UTV team was looking into it. Gupta was at the Reliance Digital Store in Bengaluru for promoting the film along with the lead actors of Ghanchakkar – Vidya Balan and Emraan Hashmi.
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.
