The mastermind of the pirated NCERT textbooks racket has been arrested, nearly three months after huge quantities of finished and semi-finished books were recovered during a raid in the national capital, Delhi Police officials said on Monday.
The accused was identified as Abhishek Sachdeva.
According to the official, information was received that a publication unit involved in printing pirated NCERT books is operating in trans-Yamuna area and the poor quality pirated books are being supplied in market at cheaper rates, causing huge revenue loss to NCERT.
"The offset unit was publishing pirated NCERT books of different subjects for Class 6 to 12 ," the police said. Subsequently, a police team was constituted and to act upon the information, and the NCERT Director was also approached for providing assistance to unearth the entire nexus.
A raid was conducted along with the NCERT's vigilance officer and production officer on the publishing unit on September 18, where the entire setup was unearthed.
During the course of investigation, the owner of the printing press identified as Manoj Jain, a resident of Shahdara was arrested. He disclosed that he was printing the said books on behalf of accused Sachdeva who had supplied the paper and material to him for printing the books.
During interrogation, he disclosed that the printing material used in these books was procured by his late father and that he planned and used to sell these books online to customers.
The police have recovered 80,000 (approx.) printed sheets of paper from which 12,000 pirated books can be prepared, 166 metallic plates used for printing infringed copies of the books, two latest offset printing machines, 5,000 pirated NCERT books, and paper with NCERT watermark which was being used for printing the pirated books.