A special intellectual property unit of the Delhi police raided a major piracy center in New Delhi Oct. 13, resulting in one of the largest seizures of pirated optical discs in India.
The owner of Palika Bazaar in New Delhi’s Connaught Place was arrested as the Intellectual Property Rights unit seized 16,855 pirated optical discs of Hollywood and Bollywood movie titles. The raid, resulting from information provided by the Motion Picture Assn., targeted a business already the subject of civil action by the MPA — and against which an injunction prohibiting the sale of pirated movies was in place.
The MPA reports that the suspect provided information about a CD-R burner lab, where law enforcement officers seized 13 CD-R burners capable of producing 2.2 million pirated CD-Rs in a year.
“The success of this raid on a notorious piracy center shows that the police and the government on all levels in India are committed to vigorously defending intellectual property rights and the economic foundation of an industry that is one of India’s cultural icons,” said Mike Ellis, MPA senior VP/regional director, Asia-Pacific.
India is home to the world’s largest film industry, which produced 946 feature films last year. Roughly 80% of pirated films seized in India are Bollywood titles. The MPA says it works closely with law enforcement authorities throughout India to reduce the country’s piracy rate, estimated in 2004 at 60% of the available titles.
Last month in Kerala, India, more than 1,500 police officers conducted 140 raids against video rental shops believed to have been engaging in motion picture piracy, arresting 67 suspects and filing charges against another 73 who remain at large. In July, police in Mumbai raided a DVD-R burner lab and seized 42 DVD-R burners capable of producing 3,628,800 pirated DVD-Rs in a year.
