Movie piracy racket: five more arrested

According to the police,a distributor takes delivery of the print from the laboratory when a movie is ready for release. The prints are sent to four locations in the city like Naaz Building on Grant Road and National Godown in Mahim for storage. Loaders pick up the prints on Wednesdays or Thursdays from these locations and deliver them to theatres across the country.

“Wasim and Ashfaq have contacts among these loaders. They give them Rs 20,000 to Rs 25,000,in return for which the loader hands over the print to them for just three hours. Within these three hours,the two take the print to a laboratory in Andheri,where they pay the operator Rs 20,000 and get it converted into beta using a tele-cine machine and then into a DVD using a DG converter machine. They then send this DVD to Asif,a wanted accused,in Pakistan. Asif would send them the money through hawala channels. They also send a copy to the accused in Ahmedabad,” Joint Commissioner of Police Rakesh Maria said.

Since the distributors keep a tab on the time at which the loaders deliver the movie prints to theatres,the accused would pay these loaders air fare to their destinations to make up for the lost hours. “On receiving the copy of the movie,the three accused in Ahmedabad either send it to Asif in Pakistan over the Internet,and in case he has already received the print from the Mumbai-based accused,they distribute the DVD or VCD copies of the movie in the local market,” Maria said.

Chirag heads the operation in Ahmedabad,and has a case of video piracy registered against him at Palanpur in Gujarat in 2006. The police have recovered five DVD writing machines worth Rs15,000 each,and 10 boxes of inlay cards from him. As many as 19 DVD writing machines,a TV set,and 1,000 pirated copies of film DVDs and VCDs were recovered from Mois.

Rahul has been identified as the brother of movie piracy accused Jeetendra Mehta alias Rinku,who has five cases of video piracy registered against him in New Delhi. Wasim is the son of Abbas Shaikh,who was arrested by the Mumbai Police in a video piracy case in December 2001.