Nine held for selling pirated copies of "Great Grand Masti"

Two days after the "censor copy" of Bollywood film "Great Grand Masti"-- the third instalment of the hit "Masti" franchise -- leaked online, nine persons were arrested for allegedly selling the pirated copies of the film here in the capital, Delhi police said on Thursday.

Karan Kumar, Vishal Kumar, Amit Gupta, Vikram Kumar, Devender Basoya, Ghanshyam Kumar, Nafeesh Ahmed, Deepak Kumar, and Rahul Kumar were arrested on Wednesday from different parts of south, north and east Delhi during multiple raids conducted by the Crime Branch of Delhi Police.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said that the arrested persons are shopkeepers at Lajpat Rai Market, Chandni Chowk, Kotla Mubarakpur, Malviya Nagar, Tughlakabad Ext and Old Seema Puri.

"They are in the business of selling pirated copies of unreleased movies for several years."

The officer said that several pirated prints of "Great Grand Masti" were seized during the raid carried out on Wednesday following inputs provided by Balalji Telefilms.

The censor copy of "Great Grand Masti" was reportedly leaked online on Monday following which the production house decided to prepone the film's release to July 15 from July 22.

"We conducted multiple raids across Delhi and filed six cases. A total of 355 DVDs, eight computers and laptops were seized from their possession," the officer said.

The accused sold porn films and obscene MMS videos also for Rs 50 per movie/video.

Apart from more than 500 Bollywood movies, including Raman Raghav, Teen, Junooniat, Udta Punjab, Sarabjit, Houseful-3 and Veerappan, several prints of recently released Hollywood and South Indian movies were also recovered from their possession.

"All the accused have been booked under Section 63 of the Copyright Act, 1957 and section 34 of Indian Penal Code, and investigation is on. Efforts are being made to ascertain the sources through which the unreleased movie was uploaded on the internet," the officer added.

The Mumbai Cyber police recently arrested a youth from Delhi for illegally uploading the controversial movie "Udta Punjab" on his website ( www.allzmovies.in) two days before its release on June 17.

--IANS

rak/lok/bg