Police raids Delhi markets, arrests 9 for film piracy

The Delhi police has arrested nine people and seized data storage devices, including computers, laptops and DVDs, in connection with the Great Grand Masti online leak on Wednesday.

The police received a complaint from Balalji Tel-efilms, a movie production house, on Tuesday and referred it to the crime branch. Acting swiftly, the crime branch sent decoy custom-ers and later sent 20 teams to conduct raids on several video rental shops and Int-ernet cafes across the city on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Nine persons were arrested during the raids on Lajpat Rai Market, Old Lajpat Nagar market, Kotla Mubarakpur, Tughlakabad Extn, Old Seempuri, Malv-iya Nagar and Chandni Chowk. The arrested persons were found to be selling unreleased or pirated films like Great Grand Masti, Sultan and Udta Punjab on pen drives only for `50 or less. The police teams also seized pornographic material from arrested persons. We have seized the material recovered from their shops and six FIRs were filed against respective shop owners,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime branch).

However, after a few hours of their arrest, all the accused arrested by the crime branch under the Copyright Act were released on bail.

The police has also identified two torrents links used to download pirated films during its investigation. “We will be writing to concerned authorities to block identified torrents links to stop further downloads of pirated movies. All of the accused have been booked under IPC Section 292 for selling pornographic material and Section 63 of the Copyright Act,” Mr Yadav added.

The Delhi police said it will also investigate, along with concerned authorities in Mumbai, identify and break the nexus of online leak of unreleased films.

A senior police officer said curbing piracy is a Herculean task because most of the servers, from where leaked Bollywood films are downloaded, are outside the country.

“After identifying the links used to download pirated material, when we block a particular download link, Internet pirates simply switch to new web address. We need more stringent laws to deal with the cases of the Copyright Act because the present laws are insufficient to stop piracy,” said the officer.

“Even downloading a pirated movie at home is a crime. We have initiated a thorough probe against piracy business that amounts to several crores of rupees every year and simultaneously cause loss of several crores for the movie financiers and producers,” he added.