Officers from the
Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights and Social Service Branch of the
Mumbai Police Seized huge quantities of counterfeit printer cartridges from the
premises of a dealer in Fort Mumbai.
The counterfeits seized during the
raid on Saturday were found to be HP and Canon packs. The total amount of the
seizure, which included raw materials used to manufacture the fakes, was
reported to be Rs 8 lakh. The police have also arrested two persons.
The
dealer was identified as Balaji Enterprises based in Fort Mumbai. The police
also raided the firm’s warehouse and manufacturing unit located at Cuffe Parade.
The arrested, Balaji Runchod Patel, the owner of Balaji Enterprises, and
Ramesh Kumar Yadav, an employee at the company, were arrested and booked under
section 51 and 63 of the copyrights act 1957. Further investigations are on.
Similar raids were conducted in January this year in Fort and MIDC,
Andheri areas of Mumbai, where the goods seized totaled Rs 8.55 lakh.
Zaheer Khan, chairman and managing director of EIPR, was quoted as
saying during the last raid that “the biggest concern for us and the authorities
is the sheer quantity of the seized goods and their similarity to the original
products. The counterfeiters had imitated each and every component that goes
into the packing of HP and Canon printer cartridges.”
Police had seized
cartridge packs, toner stickers, security tapes, MRP stickers, silver foil and
plastic tags, including hologram stickers from the MIDC area. In the Fort raid,
the contraband had included 270 HP cartridges, nine laser toners, nine refilled
toners, MRP price stickers and outer toner boxes.
EIPR and the Mumbai
police have seized fake consumables worth crores in the past few years in
Mumbai.