FIR against Viacom 18 Media, Shemaroo officials

The Amboli Police Station, Mumbai late last evening registered a First Information Report (FIR) against the Chief Officers, Directors and Others of one of the biggest Film Studios in India Viacom 18 Media Pvt Ltd part of Network 18 Group owned by Mr.Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd and also against the Managing Director and Vice President of Shemaroo Entertainment Limited. The names of those accused in the FIR include Viacom 18’s group CEO Mr.Sudhanshu Vats, COO Ajit Andhare & others and Mr.Raman Hirji Maroo and Mr.Vinod Karani the MD and Vice President of Shemaroo Entertainment Limited respectively amongst other.
The FIR has been registered after a detailed inquiry initiated upon a complaint filed by Film Producer Satish Tandon of M/s Satish Tandon Productions, the Producer of films such as ‘Jung’ released in the year 2000 starring Sanjay Dutt and others alleging that Viacom 18 has since several years been illegally hosting and streaming multiple films including the complainant’s film on its digital platform ‘Voot.com’ to its viewers without any permission and without taking a valid license from the owner/producers of such films all this while earning crores of rupees in Ad Revenue and Profits.
The demand for digital rights of Bollywood films has seen a huge upscale in the past few years with multiple digital platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hotstar entering the Video on Demand space.
The complaint alleging cheating, fraud and illegal copyright infringement by Viacom18 and its Directors/Officers was filed back in January 2019 stating that Viacom18 Media Private Limited is involved in a widespread scam/conspiracy whereby several films are being illegally exploited by them without permission and payment of rightful royalties to Producers/Owners of such films.
Although the original complaint was filed only against the Officers/Directors of Viacom 18 Media Private Limited who had full knowledge and were complicit that the said films are being illegally hosted on Voot.com, in the course of the investigation the police also seems have unearthed material against film aggregator companies like Shemaroo Entertainment Limited who own negative rights of thousands of Hindi and other language films and are hand in glove with the big studios to whom they supply various content for hosting on their channels/platforms.
^[1][2][3][4]

References

1. ^{^} Network 18 (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
2. ^{^} Shemaroo Entertainment (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
3. ^{^} Bollywood (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
4. ^{^} fraud (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

from Times of India http://bit.ly/2KbYNo8