Software piracy racket busted

MUMBAI, MAY 15: Four youths involved in a computer software piracy racket were arrested by the Thane Crime Branch on Saturday night. The police has also seized software-related articles worth Rs 56 lakh from the accused in Thane.

Acting on a tip-off, the Thane crime branch raided Chetan Lodge8217;, the residence of one Shankar Prasad Amla who is reportedly the brain behind the racket. The police seized 150 pirated compact discs from the lodge and immediately arrested Amla. The police later arrested three more persons involved in the racket from Dombivli and recovered 500 more CDs.

Amla, a computer software student from Hyderabad, had reportedly roped in three of his friends all residents of Dombivli to indulge in software piracy. The names of the three other accused are Raju Amritkar, Sachin Hirve and Ranjit Singh. All the four are in their early twenties. Police said Amla would first procure the original copies of popular software programmes such as Microsoft Office 2000, Oracle among others. He wouldthen ask his three friends to duplicate the programmes on compact discs, so that these can be sold in the market at a cheaper rate.