2 days before release ‘Udta Punjab’ appears on torrent sites, taken off

[Thakur]

Mumbai: Two days before its release, a copy of the controversial movie 'Udta Punjab' was leaked and uploaded on torrent websites. A copyright complaint was lodged late on Wednesday, with the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) cyber police station. Investigators said the film's team has removed the leaked version. 

Additional commissioner of police (crime) K M M Prasanna confirmed to TOI that a case had been registered and a probe was on. A case against unknown persons had been registered under sections 43 b (downloads, copies or extracts any data), 66 (if any person fraudulently or dishonestly does an act) of the IT Act and under the copyright section. 

The complaint was registered by Satyajeet Mukharjee from Phantom Films Pvt Ltd in Andheri. In the complaint, Mukharjee said, "The upcoming Hindi movie 'Udta Punjab' has been copied illegally and uploaded on torrent.com by unknown person. The film team learnt about it on Wednesday afternoon, after it visited the site and found the movie was available on torrent sites for illegal download." 

Soon after the complaint was lodged, the links were removed, the complaint said. "The entire movie, which has a run-time of two hours and 20 minutes, was illegally copied and uploaded on the sites," said a cyber police officer. 

The movie was in the news after the Central Board Of Film Certification suggested 89 cuts. Later, it went to the revising committee, which brought it down to 13. But the Bombay high court on Monday gave the movie a green signal, after making only one cut and inserting three disclaimers. 

Meanwhile, the CBFC on Wednesday also issued a certificate to Anurag Kashyap's 'Raman Raghav', which had been cleared by the Film Certification Appellate Tribunal (FCAT) recently after the producer challenged the review committee's decision. In 'Raman Raghav', they had challenged the decision of 'A' with cuts. Skipping the review committee, they went straight to the FCAT. The FCAT passed the film with an 'A' rating along with two cuts and a disclaimer.