Plagiarized Songs Made For A Blockbuster Bollywood Album

The scions of successful composer of the 90s Shravan Rathod (of the duo Nadeem Shravan), Sanjeev Rathod and Darshan Rathod, made their Bollywood debut as composer duo Sanjeev- Darshan in 1999 with Indra Kumar’s ‘Mann’ starring Aamir Khan and Manisha Koirala.

A remake of the western classic ‘An Affair to Remember’, ‘Mann’ bombed at the box office although it received critical acclaim. Its music album was extremely popular with many of its songs making it to the top-30 list of the year and the composer duo became the darling of Bollywood music aficionados.

It was not until the internet brought the world and its music closer to Indian fans in the 2000s that the truth came out. The audience realized that 6 of the 8 songs in the album were heart-breakingly plagiarized from songs of different artists from across the world. Here’s the list of its songs and the originals:

‘Kaali Naagin Jaisi’ was lifted from Algerian singer Rachid Taha’s ‘Ya Rayah’ from his 1993 album Tekitoi.

‘Tinak Tin Tana’ was copied from the Malaysian song ‘Sedang Sedang Saja’ by Iwan from the 1997 album Ritma Dangdut & Etnik. Iwan even filed a copyright violation case against the duo and won.

‘Chaha Hai Tujko’ was blatantly lifted from Tamil composer SA Rajkumar’s ‘Eatho Oru Paatu’ sung by Hariharan & Sujatha from the 1998 movie ‘Unnidathil Ennai Koduthen’. The song also has a popular Telugu version ‘Edho Oka Ragam’ sung by SP Balasubramaniam from the 1999 Venkatesh-starrer ‘Raja’, which was a remake of ‘Unnidathil Ennai Koduthen’.

‘Nasha Yeh Pyar Ka Nasha Hai’ was a blatant note-on-note lift from L’Italiano by Italian composer Toto Cutugno.

The introductory tune of ‘Kehna Hai Tumse Kehna’ (till ‘Aashiq ho to aisa mit jaaye jo pyar mein’) was inspired from ‘Liquid’ by Jars of Clay (1995). But to the duo’s credit, the remaining part of the song is original.

‘Khushiyaan Aur Gham’ was blatantly lifted from ‘Come Vorrei’ by the Italian pop music group Ricchi E Poveri from their 1981 album

While the songs of ‘Mann’ continue to feature in the playlist of every music lover of the 90s, plagiarism did not help further the careers of Sanjeev and Darshan, which fizzed out in the early 2000s with very few hits to their credit.