They tried to turn film piracy into an organised crime, and to some extent succeeded.
Members of the Delhi-based gang arrested by the Hyderabad police on Tuesday not only secured pirated copies of the two Bahubali films but allegedly made money by copying many Bollywood movies earlier, say the investigators.
"One of the arrested persons who was negotiating with the Bahubali makers had details of film piracy gangs all over India," a police officer unwilling to be named said.
Satellite technology
After introduction of satellite technology to exhibit films in theatres, film piracy had come down considerably. However, members of this gang had started finding new methods to copy movies.
For Bahubali-The Beginning released two years ago, they got a film piracy expert from Sri Lanka flown into Kolkata on the day it was released in theatres. "They purchased several tickets in the last row of the theatre. The expert would sit in the middle and record the film being exhibited on the screen," Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce anti-piracy wing head Manindra said on Tuesday.
The gang's kingpin was a multi-national company's mid-level software professional who gets nearly ₹25 to ₹30 lakh salary a year.
Telephone conversations of the gang intercepted by police confirmed that the kingpin was storing the pirated movies on the server of the MNC he was working with.
New method
While bargaining with the film makers, the gang evolved a new method to make money. They would make compact discs of the pirated film and send their teams or agents to interior parts of the country.
"These agents would collude with local theatre owners or arrange private screens, exhibit the film and collect money from viewers," a senior police officer said. There is no agency to check this illegal screening of films in villages.
If somebody tries to crack the whip, the agents would pack up and shift to another area, the police said. In Bahubali-The Conclusion case, members of the piracy gang rang up distributor of film’s Hindi version Karan Johar and tried to negotiate with him by claiming that they had pirated copy of the movie, the Hyderabad Central Crime Station DCP Avinash Mohanty said.
However, Mr. Johar told them that he was only a distributor for the movie in Mumbai. After that, the gang approached the film production team in Hyderabad.
Their future plan was to convey to the film producers that without paying money to them, no film could be saved from piracy.
Pirated copies
“Members of the gang revealed that they had made money earlier by securing pirated copies of some Bollywood movies but there is no clinching evidence to prove that now,” the police said.
