MUMBAI: Media Pro Enterprise India, the joint venture between Star Den and Zee Turner, has said it has organised raids against local hotels/commercial establishments in Orissa with the help of Police for allegedly pirating signals of their channels distributed without any agreement.

The company has filed an FIR against two Puri-based hotels and one Bhubaneswar-based hotel for illegally broadcasting Media Pro Channels. The raid was conducted after the hotels refused to pay heed to the notices by the company.

A senior official of Media Pro stated, "These hotels have violated the provisions of the Trai tariff order which prohibits the unauthorized broadcast of Media Pro channels without any mutual agreement with Media Pro. It is mandatory for all commercial subscribers to reach a mutual agreement with the relevant broadcaster and/or their authorized cable/DTH operator, including hotels with ratings of three-star and above, heritage hotels or any other hotel, motel, inn and such other commercial establishments providing boarding and lodging and having 50 or more rooms."

"Such establishments have to take broadcast signals directly from the broadcaster unless the broadcaster has authorized any operator to provide such signals. In this case, these three hotels qualify as commercial subscribers of such a category and were taking unauthorised feeds from an unauthorised local cable network," he added.

The company also said that in similar raid, the police had initiated an FIR against one commercial property in Kolkata, seized Set Top Boxes (STBs) and the manager was put inside bars for five days for illegally broadcasting the signals.