New Delhi: The Special Investigation Unit of Delhi's Crime Branch Police has arrested a man identified as Manoj Jain for being involved in piracy of NCERT books. He is a resident of Shahdara area.
According to the police, 5,000 pirated books, 80,000 printed sheets, 166 metallic plates, two offset printing presses and a large quantity of plain paper with watermark of NCERT have been recovered from his printing press at Mela Ram Farm, Mandoli.
Private schools used to put pressure on students to buy expensive books of private publication houses, for which the schools got huge profits. After constant complaints, the government decided to make NCERT books compulsory in CBSE schools, which suddenly led to a surge in demand of these books.
In order to take advantage of this, the accused started pirating the NCERT books and made these books available to shopkeepers at low prices. The shopkeepers also started selling those books out of greed for more profit.
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Police came to know that piracy of books was taking place in the Yamuna area. To act on this, a team was formed under the leadership of Inspector Vinod Ahlawat. Others in the team were SI Prakash, ASI Satendra, ASI Harendra, Head Constable Pankaj, and Constables Vineet and Monu.
The police team, accompanied by a vigilance officer and an NCERT production officer, raided the Mela Ram Farm area of Mandoli September 18 and recovered pirated books, printed material and plain paper worth Rs 35,00,000 from there. However, the mastermind behind this illegal operation managed to escape.
Police finally arrested him October 4 following information received from sources.
During interrogation, the accused said that he used to work in a printing press and then started running his own printing press about seven-eight years ago. He had been running the current setup at Mela Ram Farm since January 2020. The lockdown caused huge losses to the business and to cover the losses and make more profits, he started printing pirated books of NCERT as these books are in demand all over India.
