Music pirates face police ire in Tamil Nadu

Wednesday, February 16, 2005 | Editor
Chennai, Jan 22 (IANS): It's not quite music to the ears of audio pirates - Tamil Nadu Police have launched a new drive against them.

"Though the state does not have a special police cell to monitor audio piracy like it does for video piracy, police teams conduct raids along with (the music industry's) IMI teams who gather intelligence on audio piracy," J.K. Tripathy, a joint commissioner of police, told IANS.

Chennai's Burma Bazaar is considered to be the den of audio pirates in the city. Of 19 establishments raided in Chennai, nine were there. The police also unearthed three recording units in other parts of the city.

The Tamil Nadu Police along with IMI teams conducted 53 raids in the state and seized over 400,000 audio CDs in 2004, Tripathy said.

Raids were carried out in Madurai, Tuticorin, Kanyakumari, Trichy and Hosur among other places. In Madurai, seven recording units were unearthed, he said, adding this was the highest number of seizures made till date.

Talking about video piracy, Tripathy said ever since the subject has been brought under the Goondas Act in October 2004, the specially constituted video piracy cell had seized more than 130,000 VCDs and DVDs. Their total value could be worth Rs.120 million.

The all-India figures of IMI statistics suggest that 1,690 people were arrested in 1,661 raids across the country last year. About 1.4 million audio CDs, 221,002 audiocassettes and 768 CD writers were seized.

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