Mumbai on Saturday night witnessed one of India's largest ever seizures of illegal DVDs.
Motion Pictures Association sleuths in Mumbai, in association with policemen from the Bandra-Kurla police station, seized some 4000 pirated DVDs.
The haul also includes about 1500 VCDs, 500 MP3 CDs, and 400 inlay covers.
Besides the latest Hollywood and Bollywood films, the DVDs also include close to 500 copies of Anurag Kashyap's controversial film about the Bombay blasts, Black Friday.
This is a flagrant violation of the Supreme Court order. On April 21 the SC had confirmed the stay order on the film's release as granted by the Bombay high court.
The MPA is the international arm of the Motion Pictures Association of America -- an association of seven major Hollywood production houses, and enforces their copyrights across the world.
They believe that they are in pursuit of the city's -- and possibly the country's -- biggest pirate.
After the original raid was carried out on May 12, and the accused was remanded to custody for 14 days, MPA sleuths tracked the information to a warehouse on Lamington Road.
The warehouse is apparently owned/maintained by the pirate (name withheld at this point).
Amit Thukral, counsel for the MPA, Western India, told rediff.com, "This just goes to prove the nexus and the resources available with the pirates and the complete disrespect shown towards the law. This significant seizure is not even the tip of the iceberg."
The confiscated goods are estimated to be worth at least RS 3 million in the open market. The raid was conducted late Saturday evening to maintain complete secrecy and to avoid any leakage of the news.
Thukral emphatically added, "People need to be aware that piracy is nothing but theft. And pirates need to be aware that we will hunt them down."
