Video ‘pirates’ in lead role, cops play villains

By Sonu Jain

NEW DELHI: The film industry’s attempts to stop video piracy have suffered an embarrassing setback after a raid on a suspected pirate ended with members of the raiding party being arrested by local police and charged with trespass and extortion. It may take more than the intervention of Rajya Sabha MP Shabana Azmi - who took up the issue last week - to help it wipe the egg off its face.

The story begins with a raid on a house on Jangpura on Sunday morning, where 400 pirated VCDs were recovered. The disclosure pointed to a manufacturing unit in Kundli, Haryana, owned by Mahinder Batla. Owner of a company, Lara Music, Batla’s two DVD and VCD manufacturing units are worth nearly Rs 10 crore and were set up three years ago.

When a raiding party comprising private investigators of the Motion Pictures Association and the Delhi police reached there, they searched the premises for nearly three hours before the local police arrived on the scene. They accused the team of "planting the pirated tapes" and arrested seven people on grounds of trespass and extortion. Six people were released the next morning. One of the investigators, Vikram Singh, is still under arrest.

Kundli SHO Rajendra maintains that it was not a case of film piracy but "a fight between two groups". According to him, the guard was beaten up and people forcibly tried entering the premises of the factory. "The Delhi police came two hours after all the action was over," he said.

The incident would have been brushed under the carpet had Shabana Azmi not taken up the cause last week. Calling it "an extremely shocking and outrageous incident", she met Information and Broadcasting minister Sushma Swaraj and Ajay Chautala, son of the Haryana Chief Minister. "If this is the kind of patronage that is given to these people, the battle against piracy is already lost," said Azmi.

The film industry’s annual losses due to piracy are estimated at Rs 7,500 crore. The modus operandi so far had involved getting the VCD tapes manufactured abroad, mainly in Malaysia, then sent to Chennai to be circulated all over the country. The MPA has been working on the piracy issue for the last four years and hired the services of a private investigative agency, Tact India.

TAKEN FROM SCREEN INDIA

I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT LARA MUSIC WHO ARE TALKED OF THIS ARTICLE AS MAYBE ONE OF THE CREATORS OF PIRACY ARE ALL WELL REKNOWNED COMPANY INFACT SOME WILL REMEBER THEY PRODUCED A BIG BUDGET MOVIE CALL "SAPNE SAAJAN KE" STARRING KARISHMA AND RAHUL ROY....THEY WERE AS BIG AS T-SERIES AT ONE POINT

VCD tapes??? Ufff, saale anpadh journalist.

Sorry, but Lara Music was never even one tenth the size of T-Series. There are hundreds of such small time music labels like Lara in India.

When t-series when down they were growing in stature they even produced Sapne sajan Ke.....which was lawrence d souza follow up to saajan but i agee then they vanished in to thin air thos other thousands of companie like BMB MUSIC, TRIMURTI MUSIC,