NCERT book piracy: Accused illegally made printing plates from online material

New Delhi: Delhi Police on Monday said that the interrogation of the accused in the NCERT textbook piracy case has revealed details on how he operated his illegal publishing syndicate, by procuring illegal printing plates of the books and using an offset printing unit to maximise his profit margin.

According to police, the Crime Branch arrested the accused from his printing unit located in Gazipur village after conducting a coordinated raid with the vigilance officer and production officer of

NCERT.

The police immediately started investigating in the case after they registered an FIR on March 13 based on the statement given by the aforementioned officials.

Police said that during sustained interrogation of the accused, who they identified as one Abhishek Chaudhary (28), it was revealed that he learnt printing from his father's press.

Eventually, police said Chaudhary admitted to coming in contact with one Rahul Jain of Karawal Nagar who also ran an offset printing unit of his own.

During Chaudhary's confession, he said that he came to know about the huge profit margin in pirating NCERT books only after when Jain asked him to print some title pages of the national council's textbooks.

The accused subsequently set up his own publishing establishment and started printing NCERT textbooks which are being used to teach students of 6th to 12th Standards.

Additional CP (Crime Branch) Rajiv Ranjan said that they recovered a total of more than 3,000 finished copies of 9th and 10th standard's Hindi, English, and Mathematics textbooks; nearly 700 unfinished copies of 9th standard's Hindi and History books; several printing plates and reel papers with NCERT watermark.

Speaking to Millennium Post, DCP (Crime Branch) Rajesh Deo said that the accused made printing plates of the textbooks from material available online and bought NCERT watermarked reel papers from Chawri Bazar.

When asked about whether the role of Rahul Jain is also being probed, DCP Deo added, "We cannot name any person as the investigation is ongoing. I can say that we are looking at all persons involved in this piracy racket."

A case against Chaudhary has been registered under relevant sections of the IPC and Copyright Act.