We can't keep track of who cracked what joke and when: Kiku Sharda on plagiarism charge

Even before the shoe-throwing incident, involving members of The Kapil Sharma Show, fades from public memory, the show has landed in yet another controversy.
On Sunday, the show celebrated its 100th episode, featuring members of the Indian women cricket team — Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur, Veda Krishnamurthy and Jhulan Goswami — as guests. All was well, until, of course, show regular Kiku Sharda joked about how all successful Indian bowlers — from Kapil Dev to Zaheer Khan — were younger siblings in their families, which led to the punch line — ‘Do you realize how weird it is that India’s bowling strength depends on the fact that elder brothers never let younger brothers ever bat’ — a straight lift of English stand-up comic

Abijit Ganguly

’s joke from a few years ago.
When we spoke to Kiku, he said, “We are a big team and brainstorm before every episode. Someone cracked this joke and we made it a part of the script. It is possible that the same idea came to our writers, or maybe they had heard it somewhere. It is not that we do not use popular SMS or Whatsapp jokes. We can’t keep track of who cracked what joke and when.”
Abijit, meanwhile, put up a Facebook post elaborating on the issue. “This is one of my favourite jokes, and I have been using it for three years now. I released the bit on social media about a fortnight ago. On Sunday night, I got messages and tweets informing me that the joke has been lifted. I then checked it myself, and was seriously hurt. Jokes are my livelihood, and lifting it is akin to daylight robbery. I understand that it’s possible for two people to have the same thought, but this is not that. The fact that the same material was used almost immediately after I released my bit online makes it clear what has happened. Now that this joke has appeared on national TV, when I perform it, people will think I lifted it," says Abijit.
We tried to speak to representatives from

Sony Entertainment Television

that televises the show, but they refrained from commenting on the issue.