MUMBAI: The war against video pirates is increasing by the day. On Sunday, crime branch officials arrested five more persons from Ahmedabad and Mumbai respectively actively involved in the heinous act. Reportedly, these people were big suppliers of pirated DVDs all over the country.

The first group made copies of yet-to-be-released films when they were sent to laboratories for post-production processing jobs. They then sent those to their Pakistani associates through the web who would again copy and circulate them in other Asian countries.

The second group bribed loaders when they were assigned to deliver the film reels to theatres in districts. The accused paid money and took the reels to Andheri studios and then got them copied in DVDs for circulation.

The three arrested from Ahmedabad have been identified as Chirag Raval, Mois Roopwala and Rahul Mehta, while the duo picked up in the city are Imran Shaikh alias Wasim and Ashfak Baig.

Said Association of Motion Picture Producers and Television Programme (AMPTPP) senior vice president Vikas Mohan, "The police is strongly after the pirates and I am confident that the way they are moving around in search of the pirates, very soon the industry will heave a sigh of relief."

The social service branch of the Mumbai police busted a video piracy racket last week and arrested eight persons, including Adlabs business development manager Durgadas Bhakta, UFO associate vice-president Rajesh Choudhary, Reliance Big Pictures manager (overseas distributions) Neerav Shah and Shemaroo overseas distribution head Nagda Kalapi.

The number of persons arrested in the case now stands at 13. Crime branch sleuths say that more arrests were likely in a day or two.