The City Task Force (CTF) on Thursday night arrested seven persons from the Dabagardens area for pirating the movie, Bahubali, and selling them to people by downloading it in pen drives and memory chips. This was the first case of piracy connected to the Rs. 250-crore movie in the district.
Based on reliable information, a CTF team, led by Assistant Commissioner of Police I. Chittibabu, raided the makeshift shops outside the mobile showrooms located on the Dabagardens Main Road.
According to the ACP, there are about 15 such makeshift shops outside the mobile showrooms and they generally help the persons who buy new mobiles with the downloading of songs and other apps.
All the six arrested were downloading the movie in the pen drives or chips taken by customers. For each download they were charging Rs. 50, said the ACP.
According to Mr. Chittibabu, the offenders confessed that the movie was downloaded from various online sites such as Torrent, U Torrent, Torenz, Extra Torrent and Thirittu.com
‘Print is clear’
What surprises the police is that most of the new movies are watermarked and it is difficult to pirate such movies. But based on the confession made by the offenders, Mr. Chittibabu told The Hindu that the pirated copies have made their way from the US into the websites and it was downloaded by the offenders at a given time.
“There is a well-oiled piracy machinery, operating from the overseas and specific website address and time is given to all the operators in advance for the download. The pirated copies do not look to be downloaded from cinema theatres, as the print is pretty clear,” said the ACP.
The arrested were Santosh (27), M.V. Ramana (27), G. Raghu (23), K. Siva Kumar (22), M. Johar Naga Srinivas (23), D. Anil Kumar (19) and V. Sankar (36).
Computers seized
The accused were booked under the Piracy Act and handed over to the Maharanipeta Police Station for further investigation. The CTF also seized about seven computer systems and a number of memory chips.