Musician Shuja Haider accuses Indian music directors of plagiarising 'Baaghi' OST

Another day, another Indian song called out for plagiarising Pakistani content. Singer and composer Shuja Haider has accused Indian song 'Piya Re Piya' of being a rip-off of his song 'Baaghi' — the OST for the 2017 Urdu 1 drama Baaghi starring Saba Qamar.

The singer posted on Instagram to share the Indian song which has a strikingly similar music composition to that of 'Baaghi's'. "Indian Music directors Yasser Desai and Rashid Khan copied my original song 'Baaghi' and I am not proud of it. Absolutely not!" he wrote in the caption.

'Piya Re Piya' has been sung by Desai and was released on YouTube on February 12. In the video's description, the song's composition has been credited to Khan, the lyrics have been credited to Khan and Anjan Sagri and the song's production to Aditya Dev.

Here is Shuja's song 'Baaghi' from the 2017 drama for comparison.

Shuja told Images that he is certain 'Baaghi' has been plagiarised. "They've definitely copied the song," he said. "They've copied the entire verse. I'm going to look into how to pursue this further because these people have started copying [Pakistani content] a lot. They not only copy melodies, they copy lyrics as well. Look at Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's work. They've gone too far; they are copying our content whenever they please and there's no one to say anything to them. I definitely feel something should be done about this.

"I am going to talk to my lawyer. I am going to talk to people who can help me with this. I don't think I should take it lightly. If you look at the credits, the composer of the song is written as Rashid Khan. This is a criminal act. They don't even give due credit. If you'd framed the song as a cover and given credit, it would still be okay."

This isn't the first accusation of plagiarism against an Indian music content in recent times. In 2021, director Nabeel Qureshi accused Indian Punjabi song 'Mood Happy' of ripping off his music video for 'Ki Jana' sung by Shani Arshad. In 2019, singer Farhan Saeed slammed Bollywood composer Salim Merchant for plagiarising his song 'Roiyaan'.