Police booked six books store involved in pirating NCERT books

Gurugram: The chief minister’s flying squad, police and team of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) conducted raids in at least six shops in Sadar market in Gurugram who were allegedly selling pirated NCERT books for classes 6 to 12 for last many years, said police. Police said they have recovered stock of thousands of books worth lakhs

Police said the shopkeepers were buying these books from suppliers from different areas and were selling poor quality pirated books in the market at cheaper rates causing huge revenue loss to the NCERT.

Inderjeet Yadav, deputy superintendent of police (DSP) with the chief minister’s flying squad, said the pirated books are directly supplied to sellers for selling them as genuine ones. “During the questioning the shopkeepers revealed that the NCERT books have very nominal margins hardly ₹10 to ₹15 per book and the pirated books have high margins such as ₹70 to ₹90 due to which these shops were selling these books for the last many years,” he said.

Police said nearly one lakh pirated books and a large number of plain papers containing NCERT watermark were seized from these shops.

There are 311 Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) affiliated schools registered in the district, said education officers.

Yadav said the NCERT books are in huge demand as the Union education ministry has made them mandatory for CBSE affiliated schools since 2019. “We are also verifying if these suppliers were selling these pirated books to the school shops. These days parents are mostly buying books from the school stores as they are forced by the school management. Strict action will be taken against the schools if found involved in any illegal sale of pirated books,” he said.

Police said cases of cheating, forgery, and under the Copyright Act was registered at City police station and raids were conducted to arrest the alleged mastermind of the racket.

Ved Prakash, assistant vigilance officer of NCERT said that they had received the information from CM flying squad team and their team also visited the market on Saturday. “We bought a few books and demanded bill to establish the crime. Mostly the books were pirated and we have collected the samples for further proceedings. A officer from the production wing was also along with us during the raid who confirmed that the books are pirated,” he said.

According to the council, all NCERT textbooks carry watermark of NCERT logo on several pages and consecutive eight pages have the watermarks on at least two pages anywhere in the text book.

NCERT has taken measures of punishing the guilty. Pirated books not only have inferior quality of pages, but may also not have authentic content, which may also affect the academic performance of students, said NCERT officials.