A poster of the movie. Picture by Gautam Dey

A Dhanbad court issued non-bailable arrest warrants against the director-producer and scriptwriters of Koyelaanchal for staying away from hearings in a case of copyright violation.

Based on a complaint of Dhanbad-based novelist and former IAS officer Sriram Dubey, the court of judicial magistrate-I Prakash Chandra issued the warrant on Friday against director and producer Ashu Trikha and script writers Sanjay Masoom and Vishal Vijay.

Starring Sunil Shetty, Koyelaanchal is a Bollywood potboiler based on the Dhanbad coal trade and was released across the country, including the coal town, on May 9.

Dubey, a Hindi novelist, has alleged that the makers of the film, made under the banner of AMA Entertainment, had violated copywright laws as the movie was plagiarised from his novel, Agnivyuh.

He lodged a case in the local court even before the release of Koyelaanchal and stuck to his allegations even after watching the movie himself.

The court first issued a showcause notice to the three film makers and later followed it up with a summons for a May 21 appearance.

As the trio did not appear before it, the court issued a bailable warrant against them and fixed June 13 as the next date of hearing.

Since they did not appear this time, too, the court on Friday issued non-bailable warrant.

“I have a summary of the all scenes of the movie that have been copied from my book,” Dubey said, adding that both Trikha and Massom had contacted him several times over telephone in September-October last year to seek his help with the script.