Did Rituparna Sengupta copy Vidya Balan?

Actor Rituparna Sengupta’s bare-back still from Charulata 2011 has come under the scanner for being strikingly similar to a 2010 cover shoot for men’s magazine FHM, in which actor Vidya Balan bared her back. PIC INSIDE

Actor Rituparna Sengupta’s bare-back still from Charulata 2011 has come under the scanner for being strikingly similar to a 2010 cover shoot for men’s magazine FHM, in which actor Vidya Balan bared her back.

While earlier, it was actor Mahie Gill who posed in an identical style for the promos of Sahib Biwi Aur Gangster (2011), this time, it is Sengupta who has done it for the modern take on Satyajit Ray’s classic, Charulata: The Lonely Wife (1964).

HT Image

Rituparna Sengupta in Charulata (Top), Vidya Balan in The Dirty Picture (Middle), Mahie Gill in Sahib, Biwi Aur Ghulam (Bottom)

Sengupta, however, denies any plagiarism. “There are so many actresses who have bared their back. It’s co-incidental ... I wasn’t shown any sort of reference picture,” says the national-award winning actor.

The film’s director Agnidev Chatterjee adds: “Vidya Balan is not the first woman in the world to sit with her back bare. It’s just that her shoot happened before ours. We were inspired by Raja Ravi Varma’s paintings.”

Charulata's cyber romance forges a connection between Sengupta and Samadarshi Dutta, whose chat id is Amol, reminiscent of a young Soumitra Chatterjee in Ray’s Charulata.

Bratya Basu, minister of education in West Bengal, played Vikramjeet, a modern day Bhupati Dutta, Chaurulata’s preoccupied, much-older husband. Chatterjee informs that Basu was to write the script for his film.

(With inputs from Roshmila Bhattacharya)