Barbara Taylor Bradford has come out swinging after an Indian TV station defied courts and screened a series that she says was based on her top-selling novel A Woman Of Substance without her permission.
After a fan e-mailed her about a 260-episode Indian series called Karishma: The Miracles Of Destiny – the £37-million project seemed to have a plot suspiciously similar to Barbara's rags-to-riches novel – the author flew to Calcutta to investigate.
While Barbara succeeded in getting an injunction from the city's High Court to stop the broadcast, Hindi network Sahara TV screened the first instalment anyway on Monday.
Speaking from her "first ever" press conference in London, the writer remained defiant. "You can clothe it in these wonderful expressions like infringement of copyright," she said, "but where I come from in the North of England it is called a much simpler word – stealing. And I'm not going to let anybody steal anything from me." She added: "It is intellectual rape… and we are going to stop it."
The producer of the Bollywood programme – the costliest in Indian history – apparently publicly admitted to being influenced by three of Barbara's novels. Saying the tales had been "Indianised", he reportedly said: "I don't want to take a chance with a new script."
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
