FIR filed against FB user for selling pirated print of ‘Radhe’ for Rs.50

Mumbai: Last week, Salman Khan’s ‘Radhe : Your most wanted Bhai’ was released digitally on Zee’s pay-per-view platform, ZeePlex. Though the film was legally consumed through this manner by many people, a section of people, saw the film on pirated websites. 

In one such instance, an FIR was registered against a Facebook user for not just allegedly downloading the film through illegal means but also for selling the pirated version of the film on WhatsApp for Rs. 50.

According to Bollywood Hungama, as per a report, Aparna Desai, the marketing head at Salman Khan Films, learnt that Radhe – Your Most Wanted Bhai was available illegally on WhatsApp in five parts. Zee then contacted the anti-piracy agency Aiplex Software Private Limited, which asked the popular messenger app to pull down pirated videos of Radhe – Your Most Wanted Bhai.

As per this report, a day later, the makers discovered that a Facebook user named Ashwani Raghav had uploaded a post on Facebook that stated that he was selling Radhe for Rs. 50 on WhatsApp.

To verify his claim, an executive from Zee’s distribution team pretended to be a film buff and expressed his desire to see Radhe – Your Most Wanted Bhai. Ashwani asked him to transfer Rs. 50 via a payment app and when the executive did as asked, he received the pirated version of the film through Ashwani Raghav’s WhatsApp number. The FIR was then lodged against Ashwani. As per another report, two more people have also been named in the complaint.

‘Radhe’ collected Rs 10,432 on day one (Thursday, May 13). The collections rose to around Rs 22,518 on Friday, while Saturday and Sunday saw collections around Rs 13,485 each, which brought the four-day weekend collection to around Rs. 59,920.