MUMBAI: The Alliance Against Copyright Theft (AACT) along with Mumbai Police has initiated new strategies to curb piracy along with conducting regular enforcement raids based on intelligence reports and leads generated by complaints on the toll free number 1800-103-1919.

Last week, a joint team from Mumbai Police and AA Khan & Associates conducted a raid across Kandivali East – with the entire team focused on just one area. As a result they were able to ensure that all stalls in Thakur Village and Thakur Complex were closed for an entire day. With the success from this operation, they now plan on repeating this strategy in other areas where piracy is rampant.

The team also conducted antipiracy raids, based on complaints registered on the toll free number, seizing over 12,000 pirated discs estimated to be worth over Rs 1.21 lakhs.

The first raid was conducted at Andheri West station on four stalls and a small warehouse where the team seized about 8,500 discs of latest Bollywood movies.

A series of consecutive raids were conducted across Santacruz, Goregaon station and Jogeshwari in which the team seized close to 5,320 discs. They also made four arrests in the raids. A raid conducted across Kandhivili Mahavir Nagar fetched the team about more than 900 DVD.

Another major step taken last week was conducting raids with a squad from BMC. The raids was conducted from, Bandra to Andheri, where the team along with a BMC van raided multiple stalls.

UTV Motion Pictures vice president operations Prakash Nathan said, “AACT is dealing with piracy very seriously along with the support from the Social Service Branch of the Mumbai Police as also through the various local police stations. The enforcements’ innovative strategies and ideas will definitely work wonders towards helping the industry keep a check on movie pirates.”