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Rowling sues Salt Lake Puja committee for copyright violation

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Express news service

Posted: Oct 11, 2007 at 0000 hrs IST

Kolkata, October 10 The globalisation of Durga Puja is now complete. And the Salt Lake FD Block puja organisers, it seems, are to pay for it.

The organisers have had a case slapped against them at the Delhi High Court by author JK Rowling, creator of Harry Potter.

And the fault of the FD Block organisers? Taking the immensely popular Potter as their theme and creating their pandal in the shape of “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”, in the hope of more footfalls.

Taking umbrage at the organisers using her characters without her permission, Rowling had sued the organizers on October 8, asking for Rs 20 lakh for copyright violation.

“A case was filed against Mondal decorators and others. The others include Deb Electricals and the FD Block Puja committee,” said Hiranmay Roy Chowdhury, a member of FD Block Puja committee.

The Delhi High Court has summoned the organisers on October 12, five days before the pujas. They have been asked to explain why they have replicated the Hogwarts castle as their pandal “theme”.

The Puja committee members are at their wits’ end. The organisers claimed they had no clue that they had to seek permission from the author and her publishers. “We will attend the court and are ready to apologise for this mistake,” said Roy Chowdhury.

But the organisers also plan to request them to scale down the compensation.

The setting at FD Park was almost complete, with the blue tipped Hogwarts castle and the flaming red Hogwarts Express all set to chug off from platform 9-3/4.

The designers had planned to place lifesize models of the bespectacled Potter and his companions inside the pandal.

A whopping Rs 5 lakh has been invested in the pandal alone. “We did not have any commercial motive behind this. The immense popularity of Harry Potter prompted us to choose this as a theme to get more footfalls for our pandals,” said Roy Chowdhury.

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