Art imitates life. Life imitates art.
Every time a Bollywood movie is played on the big screen, the audience is reminded that- “All names, characters and incidents portrayed in this film are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental."
However, there are people who have over the years taken inspirations from such works of fictions and turned them into reality to commit heinous crimes.
Remember when an Indian man accused of stalking two women in Australia escaped conviction after he argued that he was influenced and conditioned by Bollywood movies to believe that pursuing a woman would eventually cause them to fall in love?
We have compiled a list of Bollywood movies that were imitated in real life to break the law.
1) Hindi Medium (2017)
Last week, a businessman in Jawahar Nagar was apprehended after his son was admitted to Sanskriti School in Chanakyapuri in the quota for economically weaker sections, without anyone getting a wind of it for nearly three years.
According to a report in The Times of India, accused Gaurav Goel, showed his address as Sanjay Camp, a slum near Chanakyapuri, for his elder son’s admission in 2013.
He put down his annual income as Rs 67,000 by allegedly forging his income documents. The voter cards and birth certificates too were forged. Goel had told the school that he was working at an MRI centre.
The story began to unravel when this year Goel pushed for the admission of his second child under the sibling quota.
Although the movie itself was made several years after the crime was committed, it is too hard to ignore the eerily similar plot of Hindi Medium in which Irrfan Khan and Saba Qamar ditch their lavish lives and start living in slums to get their daughter admitted in the top “English Medium" school.
2) Darr (1993)
Snapdeal employee Dipti Sarna’s abduction made national headlines in 2016 after the main accused and kidnapper Devendra said that he took inspiration from the 1993’s Bollywood film Darr in which Shah Rukh Khan played a stalker.
Devendra made an elaborate plan to abduct the girl and then win her love. According to SSP Ghaziabad Dharmendra Singh, several of his accomplices helped in the abduction, but none of them knew what he was up to.
After several foiled attempts, Devendra successfully abducted Dipti, took her to a stranded location, took “care" of her and gave her food and tried to create a heroic image for himself, saying his motives were different and that he was, in fact, trying to save her.
The next morning Devendra dropped Dipti to the Sangla Kala station. He told her they should get married and move to Nepal and settle there. “Are you going after making a friend or an enemy?" he asked her.
You can read the entire transcript of SSP Ghaziabad Dharmendra Singh’s press conference here.
3) Special 26 (2013)
In another Bollywood-inspired incident, armed robbers posing as CBI officials struck a Muthoot Finance branch in Hyderabad and left with 40kg of gold.
They entered the branch claiming to be CBI officials, and they were armed, a senior police official said.
“First one of them dressed as a traffic cop went inside and said officers from the CBI have arrived. Then another one posing as a CBI official said they were there for a search after receiving information that people were converting black money into gold post demonetisation," Cyberabad CP Sandeep Shandilya said.
The modus operandi seemed very similar to the plot of 2013 movie Special 26 starring Akshay Kumar where a group posing as CBI officials raids a jewellery in Mumbai. The film itself was inspired by the 1987 Opera House Heist at a Mumbai branch of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) Jewellers.
While leaving, the robbers also took with them the CCTV system at the branch. Employees and eyewitnesses told the police that they had dressed like officials and spoke Hindi and English.
4) Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003)
More than a dozen of crimes have been reportedly committed after being inspired by Rajkumar Hirani’s blockbuster hit Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. starring Sanjay Dutt.
In 2017, two men were held from Gurugram for appearing on behalf of an aspirant in an exam to recruit primary teachers.
A year back in 2016, 12 impersonators were held for appearing in the Uttarakhand Ayurveda Pre-Medical Test.
In 2012, the Crime Branch busted a racket involving entrance examinations to the postgraduate course at AIIMS. The modus operandi involved scanning question papers using high-end mobile phones and feeding answers to candidates via Bluetooth, reported Indian Express.
5) Bunty Aur Babli (2005)
Rani Mukerji and Abhishek Bachchan successfully pulled off con after con, looting rich people dressed as local guides, religious priests, business partners, even fake selling Taj Mahal at one point in Yash Raj Films’ Bunty Aur Babli.
Taking inspiration from the movie, a man and a woman took to crime to make quick money.
The two were involved in over two dozen cases of attempt to murder, theft, robbery, snatching, assault and attacking policemen on duty, reported TOI.
After committing a number of snatchings in the city in 2013 and 2014, Jagjeet and the woman were arrested. During interrogation, they had told the police that they were inspired by the movie, the report further said.
After the two got bail, they continued with their criminal activities.
Jagjeet was later arrested in 2017, while the woman is still on the run.
6) Shootout At Lokhandwala (2007)
Narrating an incident to TOI, Kunwar Raghvendra Pratap Singh, incharge of Women’s Power Line 1090, shared a story about a boy from Meerut who was inspired by Vivek Oberoi’s character in 2007’s Shootout At Lokhandwala.
A 15-year-old was kidnapped by his classmates by a group of students who later called up the boy’s father and demanded 50,000 for ransom and later brutally murdered the victim.
Only during the investigations, it was revealed by the accused that he was so impressed with actor Vivek Oberoi’s character in the film Shootout At Lokhandwala, that he was inspired to commit a similar crime.
The young boy also had the movie stored on his mobile and watched it every day, trying to imitate Oberoi’s mannerisms, TOI reported.
7) Khosla Ka Ghosla! (2006)
The Crime Branch busted a gang of cheats in 2013 who duped people by selling them plots belonging to the DDA in New Delhi.
Taking inspiration from Kishen Khurana (Boman Irani), from the popular satire-comedy Khosla Ka Ghosla!, DDA employees resold plots by forging documents.
Police said the modus operandi adopted by the gang appeared to have been inspired by the popular film.
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