MUMBAI: Alliance Against Copyright Theft (AACT) continues its efforts to curb and eradicate piracy. Over the last five days, AACT along with various enforcement agencies and local police has conducted raids across Mumbai and Jalgaon seizing close to 35,000 pirated discs estimated to be worth more than Rs 35 lakhs.

In one of the biggest raids conducted by a joint team from AA Khan and Associates along with the team led by Dy SP Tirupati Kakade in Chalisgaon, Jalgaon district, where they have seized 14,650 pirated discs in a music and mobile accessories shop. During the operation team got DVDs of Aisha, Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai, Khatta Meetha, Inception and Salt amongst others along with the inlay cards of yet to be released films Peepli [Live] from Aamir Khan Productions’ and We Are Family from Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. One accused Hemant Vijay Patil was arrested.

In other joint raids conducted across Mumbai by enforcement agencies and local Police, 8560 pirated discs were seized at Kalva with local police station with Sr PI Desai. The team had conducted this raid on a warehouse and few stalls in the nearby area and also made two arrests during the raid.

Another raid was conducted at Mulund check naka with Sree Nagar police station under a DCP zone – five on a parcel of 3000 DVDs. The parcel was came from Dhule, Malegaon. On the same day team has also seized 1105 pirated discs at the same location from a stall. Subsequent raids were conducted in Thane (W), Vile Parle (E) and Malad.

UTV Motion Pictures vice president operations Prakash Nathan said, “In last couple of days we have taken very stern steps to fight piracy. It’s no more about an individual film or the production house; it’s more to do with the film industry as a whole. We have received an incredible response from the common man after the launch of the toll free number and registered approximately 600 complaints in just one month of its launch. Through these constant raids we have been able to shut pirated DVDs stalls in many major areas in Mumbai.”