The Facebook post by Kashmiri writer Rahul Pandita said : A couple of weeks ago, Neelesh Misra was alerted by kind people at the Agra Book Club who had invited a man called Sanchit Gupta who calls himself a screenplay writer and the author of The Tree with a Thousand Apples, published by Niyogi Books sometime in 2016. One of the members of the book club, Shivani Chaturvedi, had read my Kashmir memoir, ‘Our moon has blood clots’ and was taken aback at similarities in few passages. Later, Bhaskar Bhatt from Penguin Random House was shocked to find that Mr Gupta has just picked up passages and anecdotes from my memoir and simply pasted them in his book. In the pictures, look at page 1 and 2, for example. Page 1 is from my book while page 2 is from his. Page 3 is mine and Page 4 is his. How can one be so brazen and stupid in this day and age? And shame of all shames: Mr Gupta has used the name of my dead brother and all his traits (Yamaha motorcycle, Jagjit Singh ghazals) and turned him into his own. Mr Gupta, a legal notice awaits you from my publishers. The editors at Niyogi Books should also be ashamed of themselves.’
Sanchit Gupta has said, ‘We haven’t received a response on our notice from Mr Pandita. However, we have decided to not pursue the matter further and leave it to his good judgment to take down the post.’