Sherawat : Tech tale

Mumbai, Aug. 8: After Mallika Sherawat and Riya Sen, it’s the turn of Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu and Manisha Koirala.

Continuing raids by Mumbai police have revealed morphed images of these actors with pornographic films for circulation as MMS on mobile phones.

Investigators, probing the racket, seized over 5,000 pirated DVDs containing pornographic films from a shop in South Mumbai. “We conducted the raid on Sunday on a tip-off. We have arrested Samal Biswas, 31, the owner of the shop on D.N. Road, and the court has granted him police custody till August 12. So far, we have seized VCDs and DVDs worth Rs 15 lakh in this case,” deputy commissioner Pratap Dighavkar told The Telegraph.

Last month, Murder star Sherawat had complained to the police about an obscene MMS showing a look-alike in a sexual act with a white man. The clip was widely circulated on MMS-enabled mobile phones across the country. It later turned out that it featured a Spanish porn actor, Lolly, who bears a striking resemblance to Sherawat.

Biswas is the tenth person arrested in connection with the racket. On July 21, the police had arrested Ashish Gurjar, 21, Ramesh Jain, 43, and Manoj Jain, 23, from Lamington Road in central Mumbai. They were arrested under Section 292 (sale of obscene material) and Section 67 (publishing, storing, recording and circulating lascivious material) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Gurjar is believed to be the technical expert and the Jains the lynchpins of the racket.

The police seized a central processing unit of a computer which contained a library of porn films, a Nokia mobile phone with MMS and wireless Bluetooth technology, a CD containing Nokia phone software and 12 memory sticks.

According to the police, the group would load the porn material on to the memory sticks which can be inserted into MMS-enabled phones and hold up to 20 minutes of video footage. The porn MMS would then be circulated rapidly through Bluetooth technology.

Among the others arrested in July are Rajesh Jain, 32, Praful Shah, 21, Bharat Jain, 26, Ayub Ansari, 37, and Vinod Jain, 33, in July.

On August 2, the police arrested Mahavir Jain, 27, and seized 1,909 pirated DVDs containing blue films. The sleuths are still searching for Gaurang Shah, 30, a key accused.