Pritam fires back at his 'Unpaid PR team' as Mashooqa plagiarism row intensifies

When composer Pritam Chakraborty released Mashooqa, the sun-drenched new single from the forthcoming film Cocktail 2, he might have hoped its breezy Sicilian visuals and feel-good energy would dominate the conversation. Instead, within hours, a familiar storm had gathered online, and by the following morning, Pritam himself had decided to answer it.In a pointed note posted to his Instagram Stories, the composer dismissed the torrent of plagiarism accusations as nothing more than a manufactured genre he labelled "imaginary similarities." He characterised the users who surface these comparisons with every new release as a fixed cast of self-appointed music detectives, and then delivered the sting: he called them his "unpaid PR team," adding that their behaviour was, in his view, simply not nice.WHAT WAS THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT: The controversy erupted the day after Mashooqa dropped on May 19. A Reddit user posted a brief edited clip, barely half a minute long, cutting between the hook of Pritam's composition and a Neapolitan comedy track from 1993 titled Se So Arrubate a Nonna, performed by Italian duo Bibi e Coco. The clip argued that the melody and beat of both songs align closely at the hook. It spread with remarkable speed.MASHOOQA DEETS The song itself had arrived to genuine enthusiasm. Written by lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya and sung by Raghav Chaitanya and Mahmood Ruaa Kayy, with Italian portions penned and performed by Mahmood, it was shot across the beaches and countryside of Sicily. HISTORY OF CONTROVERSIES In 2016, in an interview that still circulates whenever Pritam’s name trends, he acknowledged that his earlier work had, at times, crossed a line, but argued that once he recognised his errors, he had been deliberate about his craft ever since. He also recounted a legal episode that he presented as vindication: an Iranian band that accused him of lifting the track Pungi from Agent Vinod was subsequently required to issue a court apology for the false claim. More recently, when BLACKPINK's Jennie faced accusations that her song Like Jennie resembled a theme Pritam had composed for Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani, he stepped in to defend her, arguing that rhyming names and shared phrasing patterns are natural features of music, not evidence of theft. It was a notably generous gesture from a composer who has so often been on the receiving end of the same argument. THE LEGAL ASPECT: Whether Mashooqa owes anything to Bibi e Coco is a question that neither a Reddit thread nor an Instagram Story can settle. Music scholars and lawyers tend to require considerably more than a 27-second side-by-side clip before reaching conclusions. The line between coincidence, influence, and infringement is not only blurry in practice, it is genuinely contested in law.