Aftab Ahmed Khan was once one of India’s top police officers, whose fight against terrorism and organized crime led to a Bollywood film about one of his most daring encounters with the mob.
Now retired and running a security consultancy firm, he is back on the trail of criminals, hunting down movie pirates who experts say cost the Indian film industry hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue every year.
Khan has teamed up with four movie production houses — Moser Baer, Studio 18, UTV and Eros International — to take on the DVD counterfeiters that are the scourge of movie industries from Hollywood to Bollywood.
And after just two months of investigations, Khan’s task force has already pointed police in the direction of several sources of illegal DVDs and been instrumental in dozens of arrests.
“Piracy is killing the film industry,” said Khan, who had a cameo role in the 2007 film Shootout at Lokhandwala, based on his exploits leading a team of crack police marksmen that killed six gangsters at a Mumbai housing complex.
“When a family of four watches a pirated DVD, then it is a direct loss to the theater or multiplex owners, or for that matter the DVD rights holder of the film and also the government, because they don’t get taxes,” he said.
The Indian film industry makes more than 1,000 films and attracts three billion moviegoers annually.
It is currently worth some US$2.1 billion a year and is estimated to grow to about US$3.4 billion by 2013, the latest figures compiled by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry showed.
But Khan said he believed piracy is costing Bollywood an annual 15 billion rupees (US$300 million).
The figures would appear to back him up — a report by the US-India Business Council and Ernst and Young says that India’s film industry lost nearly 572,000 jobs and US$959 million to piracy last year.
Most Bollywood movies, made in Hindi, premier in cinemas across the country on Fridays but pirated copies are often available on the same day — or even before the films open — for as little as 20 rupees each.
And with tickets for many of the new multiplex cinemas costing more than 200 rupees each, pirated DVDs are in big demand.
“It is better that I buy 10 new pirated DVDs of 10 new films and see it for 200 rupees,” chartered accountant Bijal Dedhia said.
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