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ShareMumbai: The much-awaited Kambakkht Ishq, which stars Sylvester Stallone, Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor, paid a heavy 'price' before its release. An investigation carried out by BMC's vigilance department has revealed that more than 819 boxes of colour positive films, used for copying the original film and distributing them across cinemas, was brought into the city without paying octroi duty.
Acting on a tip-off, a three-member vigilance team of Prakash Desai, Dinkar Waydande, and Walmik Bele visited Adlabs at Goregaon and found that trucks carrying 379 boxes of positive films arrived last week. "We realised that octroi was not paid on the positives which had been brought to the city," Waydande said. An octroi of 5.5% of the total value of the positives is collected as octroi.
"The positives should have been brought into the city after paying an octroi of Rs3.45 lakh. We stopped the delivery of the positives after learning that the duty was not paid," Waydande said. "We wrote to the film producers, Eros International, and official suppliers, Photo Film Industries, asking them to pay the octroi along with a fine. According to municipal rules, evaders are fined 10 times the octroi levy as penalty. The total recovery amount in this case worked out to Rs37.98 lakh," N Pathan, the BMC's assesor and collector, said.
A representative from Eros International said the octroi payment was the supplier's responsibility. Keen to ensure that this did not affect the film's official release on July 3, the suppliers, Photo Film Industries, agreed to make the payment. In fact, the suppliers paid the octroi and fine for another consignment of 440 boxes of positive films, which were brought into the city without paying octroi. Pathan said Rs57.54 lakh was collected from the supplier.
