Doctors under police scanner
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A couple of doctors at the Thiruvananthapuram Medical College and some medical representatives are suspected to be involved in the piracy of medical text books.
The anti-piracy cell seized more than 50 pirated copies of costly text books from four photostat centres near the medical college on Monday.
Book piracy, which is rampant these days, amounts to copy right violation and could attract up to a two-year jail term and a fine of up to Rs 2 lakh.
Last week the police seized about 120 pirated medical books from shops near Kottayam medical college.
The name and phone number of some doctors at the medical college were noted on some books seized on Monday. Contact details of some medical representatives were also found.
Some text books recovered from the shop were taken from the Medical College library. A local native who migrated to Canada was also suspected to be providing the soft copies of some books to the shops, sources told Deccan Chronicle.
The shop owners however maintained that they were only providing photostat copies of books given by customers.
Some students are learnt to have approached the police and requested that some books they borrowed from the college library were with the shops and should be returned.
A legal representative from the Elsevier publishing house, Nikhilesh Kumar said that the company had approached the police after the sale of its books came down drastically.
“It is unfortunate that the books are being pirated even as we sell them at reasonable costs. A book that costs $1000 (around Rs 48,000) in the US is sold here for `6,000 as a low price edition,” he said.
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