Avdhoot Gupte’s controversial film ‘Zenda’ finally made it to the theatres and received a good response from the viewers. But, the pirated Dvd’s and Vcd’s hit the streets within one week of film’s release and this prompted Mr. Gupte to take cudgels against these pirates and with the support of the entire Marathi industry, he staged an agitation at the Bharatmata cinema on Wednesday at 1.30 pm.

Popular Stars like Bharat Jadhav, Prasad Oak, Santosh Juvekar, Chinmay Mandlekar, Aniket Vishwasrao, Sushant Shelar, and directors like Kanchan Adhikari, Rajeev Patil, and other dignitaries like singer-music director Ajit Parab and producer distributor Nanubai Jaisingani were present.

The president of the Akhil Bharatiya Marathi Chitrapat Maha Mandal Ajay Sarpotdar speaking on the occasion said, “Though the Marathi cinema is having a good run recently, the revenues are hit heavily by piracy and it should be curbed by everyone and the makers of ‘Zhenda’ should be commended for taking the lead against piracy.” He thanked everyone for being physically present.

Mr. Gupte, while speaking on his anti-piracy stance said, “Though there are laws against piracy, they are not implemented even after registering proper complaints and we lose lakhs of rupees due to this piracy”.

Duplicate VCD’S an d DVD’S were burnt on the occasion and a stuffed statue of pirates were also burnt