JOIN USPolice net pirated DVDs, not big fish
The reason: the manufacturers of the pirated CDs and DVDs are located in Chennai and Hosur in Tamil Nadu, which is effectively out of their reach.
In a major haul on Saturday, detectives of the City Crime Branch’s Fraud and Misappropriation Squad raided a nondescript house at MSR Layout in Marathahalli, confiscating about 13,000 CDs/DVDs.
Two persons, identified as Shivanna (36) and Balaji (25), were arrested and their vehicles seized in the police operation.
All that the police learned following the interrogation of the two was that the films were burned on the DVDs in Chennai and Hosur. Efforts on the part of the detectives to make the duo talk on the kingpin running the racket in pirated Hollywood, Bollywood and Kannada films, yielded nothing as the two arrested persons did not cough up more information. However, a police source said they would continue to pursue some leads to bust similar rackets operating elsewhere in the City.
The Marathahalli house was just one of the many collection and distribution centres for these CDs and DVDs, police sources said. “We frequently seize the pirated CDs/DVDs acting on the tip-offs we receive. It is, however, true that what we have got is just probably the last end of the piracy business,” a CCB officer told Deccan Herald.
An interesting feature of the catch, however, was the way the sleuths sorted out films which they found to be porn. In this context, an officer said: “Our team members watched some of the DVDs to ascertain their content.”
The case has been handed over to the HAL police who have registered a case under Sections of the Indian Copyright Act, 1957, and Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986. The discs will be destroyed using cutting machines once the police obtain a court order.