<i>Pirated books flood city markets</i>
Students face problems, traders count loss and government deprives of revenue
Police seize pirated books of higher studies in the port city recently.
Pirated copies of books of higher education are flooding the bookshops in the port city, causing loss to the importers and distributors alongside depriving the government of revenue. The students are also facing problems due to supply of such pirated books by a section of unscrupulous traders. The books, reprinted and marketed in violation of copyright act, are now available at different bookshops in the city. Police unearthed an illegal printing press and godown, seized huge quantity of such pirated books and arrested two people in this connection on April 16. A case has also been filed with Kotwali Police Station in this connection the same day. Detective Branch (DB) of Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) led by Assistant Commissioner (AC) Ashiqul Hoque Bhuiyan unearthed the press and four-room godown (storehouse) during its drive at a market near Boro Masjid on Sirajdoullah Road at Chandanpura in the port city. Some 20,000 pirated books of different courses of higher education like MBBS, MBA, engineering and basic sciences worth over Tk 1 crore were seized from the godown. Two people identified as Tofajjal Hossain Sajib, 27, an MBA student of Chittagong University and Shamsuddin, 35, were arrested in this connection. The books of MBBS courses include Human Anatomy by BD Chaurasia, Human Anatomy by AK Datta, Atlas of Human Anatony by Frank H Netler, Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, Langman's Medical Embryology, Test Book of Medical Physiology, Essentials of Human Anatomy by AK Datta and others. Huge copies of books used in MBA course like Principles of Marketing by Philip Kotlers and Gery Armstrong, Accounting Principles by Weygandt, Kieso and Kimmel, Marketing Management by Philip Kotler and Kevin Lane Keller, Essential of Managerial Finance by Scott Besley and Eugene F Bridgham, Business Mathematics by DC Sancheti and VK Kapoor and Organization Behaviour were found stockpiled at the godown. The recovered cache also included pirated books of basic sciences like Advanced Organic Chemistry (for BSC and MSC student) by Arun Baht and BS Baht, Modern Inorganic Chemistry by RD Madan, Theory and Problem's of Vector Analysis by Murray R Spiegel, Advanced Engineering Mathematics by HK Dass, Modern Microeconomics (Theory and Applications) by HL Ahuja and many other books. Detectives also launched such a sudden drive and seized 108 copies of pirated academic books of MBBS courses from five bookstalls at Shahi Jame Mosque Shopping Complex at Anderkilla on January 22. The bookstores were Panguine Library, Book Eden, Orient Book, Book Garden and Hossainia Library. A case was filed under Section 82 of the Copyright Act with Kotwali Police Station in this connection. But, the bookshop owners were on the run until obtaining bails from the High Court in the capital to avoid the arrest. “Since then we were in search of the press and the persons involved in publishing and marketing such books and at last we succeeded,” said Ashikul while talking to The Daily Star on Saturday. Quoting confessional statements of arrestees, he said they (arrestees) have been marketing and supplying such books at different bookshops in the port city and the capital for the last two and a half years. DB Inspector Mezba Uddin Ahmad, investigation officer (IO) of both the cases, will submit charge sheet in the first case soon. Meanwhile students, teachers and traders demanded exemplary punishment to those involved in such illegal business. Chittagong Medical College (CMC) Principal Prof Dr MA Wahab said students will face problems if they use pirated books with illegible prints and poor quality pictures of different human organs and diagram. He said in medical study picture is very important and unclear picture might give a wrong message to the students. Limon, a CMC student, said they prefer to buy the pirated copies of books due to their cheaper rates. He said sometime they get those at half the price or one third of reduced rates. Golum Mostafa, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Parama Publisher and Distributor, said they have been incurring a huge loss every year. He said the pirated copies are small in size compared to the original ones and are published in one colour with bellow quality pictures while the original copies are four coloured. Moreover, below quality papers are used in publishing the pirated copies to keep the price cheaper, he added. Parama Publisher and Distributor is reportedly the lone importer and distributor of foreign academic books of different higher courses.
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