Bollywood piracy report

Following the trail of pirated copies of Dil Bole Hadippa!, the Mumbai Crime Branch has unearthed a veritable can of worms in the form of a piracy nexus operating from within Bollywood – employees of Adlabs and UFO Moviez have been arrested for leaking masterprints of What’s Your Rashee?

UTV takes legal action against Adlabs and UFO Moviez. Gowarikar seeks 50 cr in damages from UFO Moviez. M’bai cops head to Delhi, Ghaziabad for more arrests

The Mumbai Crime Branch has arrested six people, including a business development manager from Adlabs Films and an associate vice president from UFO Moviez, for pirating 11 films even before they were released. It has also found that the entire racket is being run from Karachi in Pakistan. The latest masterprint to be leaked out was Ashutosh Gowariker’s What’s Your Rashee?, releasing today.

How the case was cracked
A Crime Branch team arrested three people, Afsar Hyder Hussain alias Ashraf, 26, Firoz Irfan Khan alias Salim, 23, and Tanzim Ali Sayed, 26, in Mumbai and recovered pirated CDs of What’s Your Rashee? and Dil Bole Hadippa!. They told police that they had got the copy of the film’s masterprint from business development manager with Adlabs, Durgadas Bhakta, and associate vice president (operations and digital mastering) with UFO Moviez, Rajesh Chaudhary, for Rs 2 lakh. Following this, Crime Branch arrested the two along with Bhakta’s associate Ajay Pal, 27. Adlabs has processed What’s Your Rashee?, and UFO was to digitise the film and release it in multiplexes. Chaudhary made a copy of the film at UFO.

The Karachi angle
The pirates disclosed that they would send a print to Karachi where it would further be distributed to countries including Bangladesh, France, Germany, Netherlands and Indonesia.

Dawood link?
Crime Branch teams have left for Delhi and Ghaziabad in search of Jitender Kumar, a major player, who is suspected to have links with the Dawood gang; two top officials of Shemaroo and Reliance Big Cinemas have also been arrested.

Officials said Kumar also has connections with the two piracy groups now in police custody. Afsar Hyder Hussain alias Ashraf, who was picked up on Tuesday, is the link between Kumar and the groups in Mumbai. Though Afsar deals with Kumar to sell and distribute pirated movies, last year, Kumar tipped off the police that Afsar was carrying pirated material and got him arrested at Mumbai airport, said a senior Mumbai police officer who did not wish to be named. Sources said Kumar is involved in distribution of pirated movies in Delhi,
Ahmedabad and Gwalior.

Industry Reacts
An official spokesperson from Adlabs said, “Our security measures makes us one of the most protected and safe environments for motion picture handling. The incident regarding What’s Your Rashee? is not attributable to us in any manner.”

Meanwhile, UFO Moviez has dismissed Chaudhary from service. Top officials of the firm met senior Crime Branch officers in Mumbai and said they would cooperate with the investigation.