According to the police, one Suresh Patel (23), the main accused in the case, and his five accomplices — Bharat Arithiya (25), Vasram Prathi (30), Jagdish Prathi (19), Lalji Arithiya (21) and James Bahati (27) — were caught with three large copiers, thousands of pirated copies and 100 original books and manuals.

They copied medical books and manuals published by American and European publishers. The police have also seized book covers, glossy boards and e-books.

Suresh Patel already has a case registered against him on an earlier occasion. According to Sanjay Mohite, deputy commissioner of police (Enforcement), "In cases of piracy, where the accused usually are suppliers picked from the street, Patel is the main culprit who set up an entire infrastructure and a huge network. His interrogation will help understand how this network worked."

Mohite added that the network is so strong that many medical practitioners and others who benefit from such manuals are in touch with Patel. "He does not sell his books in the open market. They are handed over on need basis to clients who contact him."

The six ran the piracy network under the name Chamunda Copy Centre near Lokmanya Tilak Municipal general hospital. The magnitude of the entire operation can be gauged from the fact that while the copying unit operated from inside a tailoring shop in Sion, the binding unit was at Wadala and the warehouse based in Elphinston. All the three places were raided on Thursday.

The seized pirated books are valued at Rs 34 lakh, according to a police statement. It further stated that the exercise was to copy black and white and colour prints of original books of leading European and American Publishers like Elsevier, Springer, Wolters Kluwer, Mc Graw Hill, Blackwell Sciences, Springer, Hodder Arnold, Pearson education, Lippincott Williams and sell them at a lesser price than the actual market price. In several cases, multiple copies of these books on areas like pathology, dermatology, orthopedics, ENT, radiology were copied and sent on request to medical practitioners across the country, with the transaction completed by online transfer of money.

A complaint was lodged by the Publishers Association, UK and its member companies after they found a shortage in the demand of medical books in the market from the last supply season.