Shripal Morakhia, the director of "Naina" which has been accused of being a remake, says it is very much his own brainchild though he may have used other films as reference points.

"I've been so tense, I haven't been able to get more than three to four hours of sleep every night," Morakhia told IANS. "It has been stress-filled last lap for the film, especially when unnecessary controversies are happening."

The film that released Friday shows a blind woman having supernatural experiences following a cornea transplant, but it has invited protests from doctors who are calling the story medically wrong and misleading.

He's even more stupefied by the premature assessments that his film is a "scene by scene" remake of the Chinese film "The Eye".

"A cornea transplant isn't a common subject in cinema. There have been approximately a dozen films, major and minor, on the subject in various countries.

"I haven't really gone back to any of these films specifically, though as reference points they were bound to swim to the surface when I wrote my script. But to say that 'Naina' is a remake of any one particular film is completely wrong. This is my own film, and that's the way I want to see it.

"Why are we so keen to run down our films by proving them copycats? The fact is many of the films being made abroad have begun to resemble our films."