The much-awaited Vijay-starrer Sarkar seems to have landed in trouble. A man has filed a civil suit in the Madras High Court seeking to restrain the release of the movie for failing to acknowledge him as the writer of the story as well as screenplay. He has also sought payment of remuneration of around ₹30 lakh.

Justice M. Sundar on Wednesday granted permission to M. Purushothaman, counsel for the plaintiff, Varun Rajendran, to get the case listed on the same day. However, later, he was informed that the movie’s director A.R. Murugadoss as well as the producer Sun Pictures had already filed caveat petitions.

Hence, the judge directed the counsel to serve copies of the plaint on the caveators and inform them about the hearing scheduled to take place on Thursday. The caveators must be necessarily heard before the court passes any orders especially when the litigant had insisted on restraining the release without acknowledging his contribution.

In his plaint, the litigant contended that he had penned a story in 2007 about a law student feeling dejected on not being able to cast his vote due to bogus voting. Therefore, he decides to go about creating an awareness among the people that every vote counts in a democracy.

The 100-page story written by the plaintiff was registered with the South Indian Film Writers Association (SIFWA) in 2007 itself. Again in 2011, the plaintiff had registered an alternative climax too for the same story. He alleged that the story of Sarkar was nothing but a reproduction of his story with cosmetic changes.

He claimed that Mr. Murugadoss had just changed the protagonist to be a foreign returned businessman and not a law student. However, the underlying theme of the story was the same and even acclaimed film personality K. Bhagyaraj, who was the president of SIFWA, had confirmed it after going through both scripts, he contended.