A month after the Mumbai Crime Branch busted one of the city’s biggest video piracy rackets, the multi-million dollar piracy market seems to have hardly been affected.
Pirated copies of latest film releases like Blue, All the Best, and Main aur Mrs Khanna are easily available at stalls outside railway stations like Andheri, Goregaon, Kurla, Mulund, Thane, and at shops in areas like Fort and Colaba.
A stall owner said, “There is no problem in the supply of such CDs and DVDs. We are doing good business this festive season, as the demand has increased due to vacations, and after some good movies were released last week.”
In its September 22 issue, DNA had broken the news about the master print of the film Whats Your Rasshee being stolen before its release. The investigation, conducted by the Crime Branch, revealed that the master print was stolen by a senior official working with Adlabs Processing at Film City.
A few others, identified as Ajay Udayansingh Pal, Afsar alias Ashraf Haider Hussain, Firoz alias Sameer Irfan Khan and Aman alias Tanzeem Ali Hameed Ali were also arrested.
Two senior executives working with Reliance Big Pictures and Shemaroo Pictures—Neerav Shah and Kalapi Nagda—had allegedly had taken the DVD of the movie from a person named Rakesh Chaudhary from UFO Digital Mastering and handed it over to a middle man, who gave the DVD to a person named Zubair, a Pakistan-based mafia member said to be a key player in the video piracy business.
Joint commissioner of police (crime), Rakesh Maria, said, “Pirated copies of the newly released movies are now available only after their release, which means that the master copies have not been leaked.
“These pirated copies have been sent from abroad after the film’s release.” The officer added, “Investigations are on. We are closely monitoring the activities of people involved in video piracy. Soon, action will be taken against them.”
Comments