TWO EXECUTIVES working in film distribution companies in Mumbai were arrested yesterday for their involvement in pirating movies, a thriving bootleg industry that sees Bollywood lose up to $400m (£247m) in revenue annually.
Police said six others had already been arrested on charges of aiding and abetting film piracy.
“We have arrested Nirav Shah who was the head of overseas distribution for Reliance Big Pictures and Kalapi Nagda, who headed overseas distribution for Shemaroo Pictures in connection with the piracy racket of What’s Your Raashee,” Rakesh Maria, chief of Mumbai’s Crime Branch, told reporters.
Maria said prints of this week’s Bollywood releases What’s Your Rashee and Fast Forward were to be passed on to bootleggers.
“Our preliminary investigations reveal that those arrested were involved in passing on film prints to the piracy market,” he said.
Hawkers selling cheap pirated CDs and DVDs on busy Indian streets find easy patrons among many cost-conscious consumers who pay less than a dollar for a disc instead of going to a multiplex with tickets priced at about Rs150 ($3.10/£1.90).
UTV Motion Pictures, which produced What’s Your Raashee sent a legal notice yesterday to Adlabs Films and UFO Movies, the two laboratories processing and digitising the film, and from where police say the film’s master print was copied.
“It is clear that you have abetted infringement of the copyright of the film, which is a protected work,” UTV Motion Pictures said in the legal notice.
“We will take action against those whom we have proof,” company CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur told reporters.
An Adlabs spokesperson said the piracy case could not be used to implicate the company as a whole.
“The incident regarding What’s Your Raashee is not attributable to us in any manner. The film prints are recorded for and under the best possible security measures,” a company spokesperson said.
Reliance Big Pictures said in a statement that “anybody found guilty of any wrongdoing as far as the law of the country is concerned, will be strictly dealt with”.
