Bollywood Super-Pirate Nabbed

One of the biggest dealers of pirated Bollywood films in the country has been busted at his Cambridge base.


Guilty: Bollywood DVD pirate Buhecha Jayanti Amarishi Buhecha, of Ashvale, King's Hedges, was dealing ripped-off DVDs on a massive scale.

In raids on his home and a lock-up unit in the city, trading standards officers seized 20,000 illegal films along with 28,000 counterfeit inlay cards.

Buhecha was convicted of distributing pirated Indian movies at Harrow Crown Court, and will be sentenced on February 22.

The investigation which scuppered Buhecha's operation began when the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) anti-piracy unit was tipped off about his involvement in counterfeiting.

Surveillance identified a lock-up unit in Cambridge where he was storing the films, but before officers swooped Buhecha was stopped by police in Wembley, and 1,000 fake DVDs were found in his boot.

He was arrested and bailed, but trading standards received another tip-off that he was set to dispatch a load of pirated films to a customer in London.

They followed him to the capital and he was arrested a second time, caught with 500 illegal copies in his car.

It was then that searches of his Cambridge bases revealed the huge scale of the operation.

The court heard Buhecha's first involvement with the Indian film industry had been entirely legal, when he organised screenings of Bollywood films for the local community.

As his contacts and expertise grew, however, he set himself up in business, importing and wholesaling counterfeit DVDs.

It was revealed in court that in 2002 a civil action had been taken out against him by a major film company which resulted in Buhecha agreeing not to deal in fake goods and paying more than £16,000 in damages.

However the full extent of his profits remained unclear.

Evidence showed he had taken more than £26,000 in a single month, but his own records showed a turnover of just £45,000 in a full year.


Fakes: 20,000 copies like these found

David Martin, director of the BPI anti-piracy unit, said: "The defendant was without doubt one of the biggest illegal dealers in the UK of pirated Bollywood films."

Buhecha faces an unlimited fine and up to 10 years in jail.

Bill Bilon, deputy director of trading standards for the London boroughs of Brent and Harrow, where Buhecha was caught supplying the DVDs, said: "The registered trademarks of two leading film companies, Yash Raj Films and EROS International, were being infringed, and customers were being sold low quality goods at full price."

He said the scale of Buhecha's piracy operation was large enough to undermine the genuine market for Bollywood films in the UK and could have led to job losses throughout the industry.

Source: discwrite.co.uk.