9 men arrested in crackdown on movie piracy

In a crackdown on movie piracy in the city, nine men involved in selling pirated movies were arrested from different parts of Delhi.

The step was taken following inputs were received from Mumbai based Balaji Films Private limited and other sources that some shopkeepers were selling soft copies of Bollywood movies before their release in Delhi.

“After the leakages of un-released movies such as Great Grand Masti, and recently released Udta Punjab etc, we got some inputs from the production home Balalji Telefilms, following which raids were conducted all over Delhi by the Crime Branch,” said a police officer.
In the raids police seized 355 DVDs and eight laptops from the arrested.

The first raid was conducted in Chandni Chowks’ Lajpat Rai market from where one Karan Kumar who runs an electronics shop was arrested.

“He was arrested after he agreed to provide a soft copy of Hindi unreleased movie Great Grand Masti to a decoy customer,” said a police officer.

“He was also selling blue films and obscene MMSs in pen drive at the cost of Rs 50 each,” he added.

Pirated versions of several other Bollywood movies like Raman Raghav, Teen, Junooniat, Udta Punjab, Sarabjit, Houseful-3 and Veerappan etc. were found stored in his laptop apart from more than 500 Hollywood and South-Indian movies, said police. 

In another raid at the same time, a team of Crime Branch arrested another accused Vishal from his shop No. 679, at Old Lajpat Rai Market.

In the third such raid Amit Gupta, 30, Vikram Kumar, 25, and Devender Basoya, 30, were arrested from south Delhi’s Kotla Mubarakpur.

They were also selling pirated unreleased Hindi movies, said police. Police then raided a shop in south east Delhi’s Malviya Nagar and arrested Ghanshyam Kumar, 43, who was selling pirated movies in his shop. After that Nafeesh Ahmed, 28, and Deepak, 19, were also arrested from Tughlakabad extension and Govind puri respectively, police said.

In the last raid, police arrested Rahul, a mobile recharge shop owner from Old Seemapuri, after he agreed to provide a soft copy of the Bollywood movie Great Grand Masti to a decoy customer.
Further investigation of all the cases is in progress, and police are trying to ascertain the sources through which the unreleased movie was uploaded on the internet.