9 nabbed for selling copies of unreleased Bollywood movie

NEW DELHI: Nine men were arrested on Wednesday in Delhi Police crime branch’s raids on city markets for shops selling pirated copies of the upcoming Bollywood movie

NEW DELHI: Nine men were arrested on Wednesday in Delhi Police crime branch’s raids on city markets for shops selling pirated copies of the upcoming Bollywood movie Great Grand Masti.

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Nine cases under sections of Indian Penal Code and Copyright Act were slapped on them.

A total of 355 pirated DVDs of the movie, eight computers and laptops with copies of recently leaked movies, pornographic movies and clips, and other incriminating materials were seized from them.

The arrested men said they downloaded unreleased movies from various websites to their devices and sold copies via DVDs and pen drives for Rs 10-Rs 50 a copy, a senior police officer said.

Joint commissioner of police (crime) Ravindra Yadav said they regularly got inputs that shopkeepers sold soft copies of Bollywood movies before their official release, porn movies and obscene MMS.

He said they raided shops based on Balaji Telefilms’ inputs and because of the recent leak of latest movies such as Great Grand Masti and Udta Punjab.

Raids were conducted at Lajpat Rai Market in Chandni Chowk and those in Malviya Nagar, Kotla Mubarakpur, Tughlaqabad Extension and Seemapuri.

One Karan Kumar alias Akku was nabbed in one of the raids at Lajpat Rai market. Akku of Babbu Electronics agreed to copy ‘Great Grand Masti’ and pornographic content to an undercover police officer’s pen drive for Rs 50 each.

“Akku confessed to selling pirated copies of Udta Punjab to several persons before its official release,” Yadav added.

“Pirated versions of several recently released Bollywood movies like Raman Raghav, Teen, Junooniyat, Udta Punjab, Sarbjit, Housefull 3 and Veerappan were found in his laptop. It had over 500 Bollywood, Hollywood, and south Indian movies,” said Yadav.

Akku, who runs a mobile phone accessories store, began selling pirated copies of movies and pornographic materials to earn an additional Rs 10,000 every month.

Vishal alias Pappi from Lajpat Rai Market, Amit Gupta, Vikram Kumar and Devender Basoya from Kotla Mubarakpur, Ghanshyam Kumar from Malviya Nagar market, Nafees Ahmedand Deepak from Tughlaqabad Extension and Rahul from Seemapuri were the others arrested.