New Delhi police bust Harry Potter piracy ring

Police raided a printing house in New Delhi and seized 8,000 illegal copies of the latest Harry Potter best-seller, officials said today.

Three men were arrested on Sunday after police, acting on a tip, raided a printing house in a north-eastern suburb of the Indian capital and found 2,700 freshly printed copies of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, said RL Meena, deputy commissioner of police.

Questioning of the men led police to another warehouse, where 5,300 copies of the book were being bound with its distinctive cover, Meena said.

Police had been on the lookout for Potter pirates after counterfeit copies of the book hit the streets within three days of the original being released in India.

The pirated versions were being hawked for as little as 175 rupees (€3.29) by pavement booksellers. Originals are sold in bookshops for 895 rupees (€16.82).

The printing press, book binding machinery and pirated copies have been seized by the police.

Young men and boys hawking pirated copies of best-selling books, at a fraction of their original prices, are a frequent sight at New Delhi’s traffic lights.

Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and The Zahir, and assorted John Grisham thrillers are hot favourites among the traffic stop vendors.

“Normally we seize pirated books from the retailers. This time we succeeded in hitting the source of the racket,” Meena said.

The three men have been arrested for violating India’s Copyright Act, an offense which carries a two-year prison sentence.

In a raid on Friday on a different operation, police seized 34,000 pirated books, mostly best-selling fiction, including copies of all six Harry Potter volumes, Meena said.

Harry Potter is immensely popular in India. Months before the latest work on the wizarding hero was released internationally on July 16, the book’s publishers in India, Penguin Book India, had fully paid up advance orders for more than 125,000 copies, said a press release from the publishing firm.

More than 100,000 copies were sold in India on the day of its release, and the book is topping best-selling lists in the country.