Special Feature

Ever since the Indian Music Industry set up its anti-piracy cell and appointed this supercop to head its team, consisting of eminent police officers, piracy has fallen drastically. Julio Rebeiro talks to SCREEN about the IMI’s latest initiatives to tackle the menace...
If the report of the International Federation of Music Industries is to be believed, piracy accounted for 40 per cent of the national sales of music cassettes in 1996. However, according to the National Productivity Council’s recent study in various states, the figure has fallen sharply to 25 per cent, suggesting that our raids, conducted with the help of the police in various places from time to time, has been a huge success.

Indeed, it’s served as a deterrant for the pirates. But we must bear in mind, here, that while we have a record of the total number of music cassettes sold by all the leading labels put together, we do not have any records of the losses that really accrue from the sales of pirated cassettes. That’s a sobering fact.

Our anti-piracy cell has been able to set up units in 25 states, including Assam. We have also begun publishing newsletters regularly, that tell you how many raids were conducted in the country each month, and how many were arrested.

The IMI has appointed consultants in the UK and Holland. Our man in the UK began operations in February, and it’s resulted in the seizure of over 1000 CDs in Northern England. In March, 3000 CDs bearing the leading labels were seized from a South London shop owned by Amin Valji, who was arrested by the British police. One Ibrahim Sodha was sentenced to an eight-month imprisonment by the Warwick Crown Court for dealing in pirated cassettes.

In Holland, IMI will work closely with BRIEN, the Dutch anti-piracy agency, to prevent the import and sale of illegal CDs. A raid at Rena Record Centre, Amsterdam, has already led to the seizure of 400 CDs.
On the home front, our raids in Delhi, Naroda in Ahmedabad, Indore, Erode, Pune, Mathura and parts of Kerala resulted in the recovery of inlay cards and the closure of recording units in January, February and March. In January, we conducted raids with the help of the local police in Delhi, Ahmedabad, Saharanpur and Bhatinda where a lot of pirated cassettes were seized, in addition to the one lakh inlay cards seized in Andhra Pradesh.

In order to create awareness among the police officers and educate them on matters related to copyright theft, we’re holding workshops at several places. We conducted a Copyright Workshop in Bhopal on March 24, in which officers of the Madhya Pradesh police, including director general SC Tripathy. Among those who conducted the classes apart from me, were Lalmalsawma, who holds direct charge of copyright, with the ministry of HRD, and NK Sharma. The MP police has been very co-operative in our efforts to tackle the menace of piracy after the workshop. Now, we’re sure they are as committed to the fight against piracy as we are. Our MP team, led by JS Chauhan has carried out 300 raids, arrested 309 accused and seized 65,000 pirated cassettes and 150 recording machines. We have covered 50 of the 61 districts of Madhya Pradesh with our anti-piracy measures.

Encouraged by the overwhelming response we got to our MP initiative, we conducted a workshop in Mumbai similar to the one in Bhopal in April. We then followed it up with workshops in Bangalore on April 25, Calcutta on April 26 and New Delhi on April 27. These workshops have yielded good results, too. Soon after the Calcutta workshop, for instance, the deputy commissioner of police conducted raids at Chowringhee, when 30,000 music cassettes were seized. Recently, we also conducted raids in Kerala, when we made our biggest haul ever, of 5 lakh illegal cassettes.

Raids in April at Pune, Baramati, Nagpur, Gondia, Kolhapur and Ahmednagar in Maharashtra also yielded great results. In Mumbai, raids were carried out at shops in Girgaum, Lamington Raod, Chembur and Santacruz. In Tamil Nadu, three persons have been arrested and 6334 cassettes seized from shops in Virudhanagar and Tiruchendur. In Karnataka, 1000 pirated cassettes were seized from four shops at Bangalore’s Kalasipalayam Main Road alone. In the Eastern zone, Sheikh Babbar of Aawaz at Calcutta’s Vidhan Market was arrested and sentenced to jail for three weeks after he was caught red-handed, dealing with illegal cassettes.

However, the police don’t seem to be too keen on raiding the hawkers. Obviously, that will require a massive force just to combat the agitations they’re bound to unleash. We did meet the minister for home, LK Advani, on April 27 and urged him to give us a special force with no additional task other than to carry out raids periodically. Since the police stations do not have any special cells to deal with piracy in films and music, cases related to piracy are low on their list of priorities. In Mumbai, piracy-related cases come under the purview of the economic offences wing, headed by a special officer, Anantrao Shinde. The economic offences wing is already over-burdened, especially since it has to deal with a lot of other offences. The need of the hour, obviously, is a task force especially dedicated to tackling cases involving piracy. I’m convinced that isn’t asking for too much. We can keep piracy under control only by carrying out raids as and when we’re able to ferret out information on such crimes. In the absence of a special force, we cannot be totally effective.

Countries like Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have no copyright legislation worth the name. Is it any wonder then, that the pirates have virtually destroyed the music industries in these countries. Tackling piracy takes monumental effort, especially in a country as vast as ours. And we cannot seek the police’s help unless we have definite leads on a piracy-related activity. Weighed down as our cops are by a whole gamut of serious crimes, we’re forced to use our police sparingly in our efforts. That is a great handicap. Not that we lack support from the police, though they still need to be made aware of the extent of copyright theft, and how it can be tackled. In the absence of a special force, we’re forced to make do with the best resources we have. And that isn’t much."

As told to MSM Desai