According to the Indian Music Industry, India faces losses of up to 50 percent to piracy. From the Hindu: The Indian Music Industry on Tuesday said that it is facing a loss of 50 per cent due to piracy and is struggling to “keep its head above water”. “Music Industry is facing losses of about 50 per [...]

India is facing a possible threat of home grown terrorists after a recent bombing. From the CS Monitor: The portrait of an Indian terrorist has long been a caricature: poor Indian Muslims indoctrinated in radical seminaries and funded by Pakistan, India’s neighbor and longtime enemy. But two of the suspects arrested Wednesday were software engineers, one ran [...]

A new report bu NGO’s in India has found that up to 10,000 children are trafficked into Northeast India each year. From the Times of India: Not less than 10,000 people, mostly children, are trafficked into the Northeast with a good number smuggled in from Bangladesh, Nepal and other South East Asian countries, surveys by NGOs reveal. Most [...]

Bunty, an outlaw criminal who terrorized the streets of New Delhi, was killed by police earlier this week.  The AP reports on the lore of Bunty and the impact of high-profile criminals in India. From the AP (via IHT): When someone was shot or robbed in this city of 16 million, where murder is relatively rare, the [...]

7,500 people have died while in Indian prisons since 2002, according to a new report. From BBC News: The report by Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights says many of these people were tortured in custody. It says the Indian government is in a state of denial about torture. Even when action is taken against officials who are accused [...]

Bollywood films face a high level of piracy in the United Kingdom compared to Hollywood films. From BBC News: The Indian films, usually with a theme involving star-crossed lovers, have a global audience. But the industry is being hit by piracy, and in the UK, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) estimates 70% of DVDs found on sale in [...]

According to Reuters, “About 70 to 80 of Assam’s 5,000 wild elephants are smuggled out of the northeastern state every year, conservationists say, despite India’s ban on the trapping of wild elephants in 1986.” Source: Biswajyoti Das, Reuters, “Elephant Smuggling rampant in India’s Assam,” Alertnet.org, June 15, 2007.

Source: “Desi pirates steal a billion from Bollywood,” Economic Times, May 4, 2008.

The movie industry in India is losing about $1 billion to pirated movies in the United States.  From The Economic Times: WASHINGTON: Pirates are robbing Bollywood of a billion dollars in revenue annually in the US, says veteran Indian filmmaker Bobby Bedi, lamenting that “the face of the Indian films pirate is Indian”.  “The home video market in [...]

Source: “Women trafficking still on the rise,” eKantipur.com, November 15, 2007.