LAHORE   -   ‘The legend of Maula Jatt’, remake of the 1979 Punjabi blockbuster 'Maula Jatt', has been in the news for all the right and wrong reasons since release of its trailer.

Bilal Lashari, director of the film scheduled to be released on Eidul Fitr, however, claimed that it was not a remake or sequel of the original version in any way.

Sarwar Bhatti, producer of the original version starring Sultan Rahi and Mustafa Qureshi, is not ready to accept the argument, saying it would be copy right violation. His son Muttaqi Sarwar has claimed to have attained a stay order against the release of the film.

Talking to The Nation, Muttaqi Sarwar said: “It is extremely sad to see the attitude of so-called literate film makers like Ammara Hikmat, Bilal Lashari, Nasir Adeeb and their whole team. My father Muhammad Sarwar Bhatti made Maula Jatt in 1979. As many as 538 films were banned by General Ziaul Haq under MLO 81 and 537 films are still banned and only one ban on a film was lifted and that was my father's debut Maula Jatt.”

He continued, “My father paid the highest entertainment tax worth Rs90 million in 1981 for Maula Jatt. Bilal Lashari, son of a famous civil servant Kamran Lashari, is violating our copyrights from 2012 when he announced the making of Maula Jatt without getting our permission.”

“Few months ago, the Intellectual Property Tribunal ordered that Bilal Lashari and their team cannot use the title of Maula Jatt as the judge further explained that the combination of the words Maula and Jatt can be used separately but ‘Maula Jatt’ cannot be used as a combined title so their title ‘The Legend of Maula Jatt’ is a clear cut contempt of court and infringement of our copy rights. The court gave a permanent injunction on the title of Maula Jatt and the rest of our case about the using of our characters, dialogues and overall style of our film is still pending in the court,” he said

About the court orders, he said: "The tribunal has also ordered all the censor board not to censor any film containing the title of Maula Jatt. But we see a clear cut violation of the laws from Bilal Lashari in the supervision of his father who is influencing the institutions like intellectual Property Organisation and Censor Board to bypass the whole legal system.”

He concluded: “Our applications for the registration of the FIR against Ammara Hikmat, Bilal Lashari, Nasir Adeeb and their team is lying pending with the FIA for almost a year now and Kamran Lashari is influencing FIA in the case. Bilal Lashari and their team have released the trailer of their film ‘The Legend of Maula Jatt’, and committed the crime. So, we demand the authorities register the cases against Bilal Lashari, Ammara Hikmat, Nasir Adeeb and their whole team including the actors who are openly supporting them. We demand to register our cases in the FIA against them and arrest these perpetrators.”