It’s a good thing Padmavati is not opening in the UK on Friday. Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s controversial period drama was cleared by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) for release with a 12A rating. This means a child below 12 has to be mandatorily accompanied by an adult to see the “uncut” version of the film. However, Viacom 18 Motion Pictures, the film’s producer, refused to go ahead and screen Padmavati in the European nation after the Shri Rajput Karni Sena of India threatened to burn cinemas across the UK and the Rajput Samaj, a London-based charity organisation, demanded the British censors revoke the certification. The filmmakers said they want to settle things in India before going ahead with Padmavati’s international release.

Most disappointed by this decision is reportedly a shadowy Pakistan-origin group of movie pirates based in UK. They were initially rejoicing when the BBFC cleared Padmavati for screening. In this digital age it is easy to shuttle pirated prints of films through Torrent links and even their download and transfer on smart phones is possible. The UK movie pirates thought, with there being no signs of Padmavati releasing in India, this was a big opportunity for them to make mega bucks. All they had to do was get a good quality print shot on a high definition video camera discreetly hidden in the projection room of a small UK cinema. Movie pirates in Pakistan were reportedly prepared to pay 7,000 pounds through hawala operators for a Padmavati print if it reached them within six hours of the film’s release in UK.

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PeepingMoon.com has learned it is not rocket science for movie pirates to get videos of high resolution with clear sound quality these days. And that might have been Padmavati’s fate had the film released in the UK on Friday. A source said that once the print was captured on HD camera, the pirates download it on video edit software with the help of cheap hack tools and enhance the film’s picture and audio quality. They also blur codes on the print which reveal to anti-piracy agencies from which cinema the film was downloaded. The pirates share this converted download through Torrent or MOV (a multimedia format developed by Apple which is compatible with Mackintosh and Windows) files which are safe and untraceable. Sometimes pirates smuggle prints of films from processing labs and edit studios during their digital cinema packaging (DCP) or while a copy is being made for the Censor Board. The Pakistani movie pirates in the UK are believed to have activated their Indian counterparts to be prepared for the windfall that could come from Padmavati.

Pakistan is famously a big market for Bollywood films. And pirated prints of Padmavati would have hit small market stalls (bakdas) in the neighbouring country within no time of the film releasing in the UK. It is believed that puthas (the DVD jacket) of Bhansali’s film were ready a week ago. These pirated DVDs are sold for as cheaply as 50 Pakistani rupees. But the pirated run of a Bollywood film is short because the film becomes available on Torrent links and websites within 24 hours. So the movie pirates have only that much time to make their money. Nevertheless, countries like Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh still prefer DVD prints and mobile transfers which account for 50 per cent of the entire racket. According to Shahebaz Khan, an anti-piracy counsel, Torrent sites earn up to Rs. 4 crore on a controversial or extravagant film. The Cyber Crime Cell of the Mumbai Police can do little when the servers and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses are registered internationally and the movie pirates send links and videos through encrypted formats which are difficult to track.