Tamil Nadu State Film awards were announced recently and director Radha Mohan was awarded the Best Story Writer for the film Payanam for the year 2011.
Eminent Tamil writer Pattukottai Prabhakar had mentioned in his Facebook page that he had written to the Tamil Nadu CM to reconsider this, as the story of Payanam is his. He further shares his letter written in Tamil to the CM, a rough translation of which is as follows:
“Payanam is based on a novel Idhu Indhia Padai written by me. This was filmed without my permission to use the story. I had sent my story to Radha Mohan and had also talked to him regarding this. He read the story and agreed that both the stories are the same and promised that he would issue a press statement to this effect. Since, he did not honor his commitment, I had to approach the media and had written a lengthy article about this in the Tamil weekly Kumudham. This is one of my bitter experiences in my 40 year Tamil literary career and 20 years of film journey”.