Bangalore police seize pirated versions of bestsellers including latest Harry Potter release

In a major haul, the Bangalore police have seized thousands of pirated copies of bestsellers including the recently released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of policemen raided a printing press and an adjacent godown in Kumaraswamy Layout in Bangalore to find more than 10,000 pirated versions of several international bestsellers. The value of the seized books is estimated to be around Rs 4 million, according to Bangalore City’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (South) Alok Kumar.

The police arrested Inayath, 32, while he was trying to transport a consignment of the pirated books from the godown on Sunday. Police said the pirated book printing and distribution racket was run by Inayath and his accomplice Babu, who managed to escape.

Alok Kumar said the police were on the look out for the book piracy racketeers for the last one month after a publication house in New Delhi informed them about sale of pirated books in Bangalore.

After waylaying a car transporting the pirated books and arresting the driver Inayath, the police team raided the nearby printing centre and the godown. Inayath and Babu used to operate the book piracy racket with networks in Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai. “They used to print the books between 11 pm and 3 am in the night”, he said.

Apart from J K Rowling’s latest “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”, the raid also yielded copies of Arundhati Roy’s “God of Small Things”, Pakistan President Parvez Musharraf’s “In the Line of Fire” and out-going Indian President Abdul Kalam’s “Wings of Fire”, besides pirated versions of books published by Harward University Publications.

The policemen also recovered more than 4,000 covers of bestsellers authored by noted writers like J K Rowling of the Harry Potter fame and India-born British author Salman Rushdie. “The covers look like original. The racketeers have mastered the art of reproducing the cover of the originally published editions with immaculate precision”, Alok Kumar said.

Besides continuing the search for Babu, one of the racketeers, who is absconding, the police will organize similar raids in different parts of the City, he added.