Puducherry partner arrested for selling fake consumables

PUDUCHERY, INDIA: Puducherry police arrested a channel partner for allegedly selling spurious HP consumables.

The police, along with Enforcers of Intellectual Property Rights (EPIR), raided the premises of Gautham Infotech, and seized spurious inkjet cartridges and toners worth Rs 1.5 lakh. Sathyanarayana, Proprietor, Gautham Infotech was remanded to police custody. The accused, who deals with stationary products, had been selling consumables for the past six months.

R Satheesh, GM—Operations South, EPIR estimated that Sathyanarayana probably sold spurious HP consumables worth Rs 20 lakh in the past six months time, and Puducherry government has been the major customer for him. After receiving information from sources on the fraud happening in Puducherry, EPIR conducted a test purchase and raided Gautham Infotech along with the police.

The accused had allegedly bought spurious consumables at an extremely low price and had been bundling them along with original products in case of bulk deliveries.

Satheesh also informed that Sathyanarayana has been booked under Copy Rights Act, where he is liable to imprisonment of three years or a fine of Rs 1 lakh, or both, and there are chances of the accused being booked in cheating case under Section 420.

“Preserving the identity of IPR is our major task, and we regularly identify spurious products manufacturers. We act based on the information received from various sources on these illegal manufacturers and have the power of attorney from companies like HP, Canon, Samsung, Microsoft and SAP to name a few, for conducting surveys and raids, in case of any IPR violations,” Satheesh claimed.

He said that EPIR has caught as many as 45 cases across the country in 2008, where they found nearly 20 spurious manufacturers. “There is a huge network involved in manufacturing and selling spurious consumables for HP alone. These products are manufactured in North India and are being distributed across the country. Our organization has been actively involved in identifying and uprooting these manufacturers, and saving the IPR of all major brands,” Satheesh informed.