Almost a year after it became a hit, people are talking about Raanjhan, the song from Kriti Sanon and Kajol’s Do Patti (2024), all over again. But this time, composer duo Sachet-Parampara’s creation has hit headlines for plagiarism. Earlier this week, international music producer KMKZ posted a video on Instagram, noting that the piano loop and chord progression in Raanjhan matched his creation that he had uploaded two years ago. He went on to reveal that he had mailed music label T-Series and Sachet-Parampara regarding the plagiarism, but didn’t receive a reply. “I have not been credited or paid,” said KMKZ, adding that he has now taken the legal route to ensure that he gets his due in terms of credit and compensation.
This is the second plagiarism allegation against Do Patti’s album. In 2024, Kolkata music producer Rajarshi Mitter alleged that the track, Maiyya, was lifted from his composition and sent a legal notice to the makers.
KMKZ; (right) (L-R) Parampara Thakur and Sachet Tandon
As the two accusations put the spotlight on music creation in the Hindi film industry, entertainment lawyer Priyanka Khimani, who worked with Mitter on the case, said that in such instances, the onus usually rests with the music directors. She told mid-day, “In recent times, the label is not as involved in the making of the soundtrack. The composer is making the songs with their own sensibilities, or with relevant direction from the film’s makers. Of course, there is collective responsibility in so far as infringement and copyright law are concerned. But in this case, one needs to examine where the process originated and what due diligence was put in place before using third party beats and samples.”
With music samples readily available on the internet, Khimani noted that many artistes tend to be callous about picking them up without acquiring them through proper channels or without reading the fine print. “A lot of composers and creators tend to be fast and loose about picking up beats and samples that are available on third party platforms, without doing a deeper dive into their origin. There have been claims from producers of beats that were licensed from a beats platform — in some cases, the composers would purchase an incorrect licence that didn’t allow them to make commercial usage of that beat. It boils down to ignorance, or pure callousness. Just because it’s on the internet does not mean it’s in the public domain.”
Priyanka Khimani
Khimani emphasised the need for musicians to be mindful of acquiring licensed material. “You can’t use third party assets without ensuring that you’ve reached out to the concerned person and licensed it correctly to use it in a commercial fashion.”
When mid-day contacted Sachet and Parampara, they replied with the statement, “Whoever the guy who’s claiming that he has produced music for Raanjhan is completely a false claim and false allegations and is aimed towards gaining unnecessary popularity. Each and every line. (Every single word/music/beat) of raanjhan is composed by us Sachet-Parampara and no one can claim it to be theirs under any circumstances. We have also shared original music composed files, piano scores (originally composed by sachet -parampara ) with YouTube, Spotify and other streaming platforms which proves that our work is completely original. It’s a normal F sharp scale chord progression which is a generic chord progression that gets used or can be used in multiple major scale songs. Chords like F sharp E flat minor and D flat can commonly be put together by any composer if they’re making a song on f sharp major Scale. Since we have provided the orginal files, his strike down request has also been rejected after the platforms reviewed our original files. We would like to also mention here is that Sachet- Parampara have always made and composed original music and we take pride in that. What’s important here is that Our lawyers have now taken this matter into court for further proceedings and we are filing A defamation case against them as it’s hampering our long earned goodwill in the music industry. Any kind of such misleading acts/ claims by anyone will not be tolerated. We love all Our fans. Please be assured that we’d never ever break their trust. There are many reasons why people have loved both of us. Each work we have done since last 10 years is loved by each one of them and it’s completely our own sweat and own hardwork of days and nights.”
