MUMBAI: Alliance Against Copyright Theft (AACT) conducted simultaneous raids across Maharashtra, Haryana & Rajasthan in a bid to stem movie piracy in the country. During the raids close to 35,000 pirated DVDs worth Rs 1.8 million were seized, including 2500 DVDs of the recently released Dum Maaro Dum starring Abhishek Bachchan and Bipasha Basu.
Also seized were DVD of Walt Disney India’s superhero flick Zokkomon.
On 25 April, AACT’s team conducted a raid on a warehouse in Kausa (in the Mira Road-Thane region), where 18,000 pirated DVDs were seized. The team led by A.A. Khan & Associates and Mumbai Police also seized 60,000 inlay cards of Dum Maaro Dum.
On 27 April, the team also conducted raids at Fort and Trombay. In the raid conducted at Fort 2817 pirated DVDs were seized including 715 DVDs of Dum Maaro Dum while in the raid conducted in Trombay 1867 pirated DVDs were seized which included 226 DVDs of Dum Maaro Dum and 151 DVDs of Zokkomon.
Earlier in the week, two more raids were conducted in South Mumbai near Azad Maidan and Kamathipura. The team seized 592 and 582 pirated DVDs in the two raids at Azad Maidan and Kamathipura respectively. Close to 150 pirated discs of Dum Maaro Dum were also found in these raids.
AACT also conducted raids in Jaipur (Rajasthan) and Jind (Haryana). More than 7500 pirated DVDs were seized in Jind while 3500 discs were seized in Jaipur. Both the raids were conducted by a team led by Anil Malhotra along with the local police in the respective states. In both the raids more discs of Dum Maaro Dum were seized.
Speaking on the raids, an AACT spokesperson said, “Over the last one year, AACT has established itself as the industry’s voice against movie piracy. It is a matter of pride for us that today we have been successful in conducting raids across several centres in India since starting out operations from Mumbai in early 2010. While movie piracy is still rampant in many parts of the country, it is heartening to see that by conducting mass raids, like the ones over the last few days we are able to reduce the accessibility to illegal copies of new releases.”
