16 university students arrested for pirating ‘Ties That Bind’, Leila Djansi suing for GHS170000

A total of 16 students from the University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the University of Cape Coast (UCC) have been arrested and currently helping the Ghana police service with investigations into organised movie piracy in the country.

Several of the movies in question includes the African Movie Academy Awards nominated ‘Ties that BIND’ by Leila Djansi.

Five of the students are from the University of Ghana, seven from KNUST in Kumasi and the remainig four from UCC – Cape Coast. Police located several movies on thier hard drives. Their arrest came after several weeks of investigations by the police in conjunction with movie producer and director Leila Djansi whose movies were the most pirated.

According to Leila, who confirmed the arrest to Myjoyonline.com from her base in the US,

She got a tip-off during the premiere of Ties that Bind in Legon some weeks ago that some students already had copies of the movie

“so I arrested one of the students who revealed where he got it from,leading to the arrest of the Legon students by the Legon Police two weeks ago.”

The award-winning director added that;

“I search twitter a lot, so at KNUST, I caught some students who tweeted ‘now watching [Ties That Bind] and I traced them and that is how I got the KNUST students.Hopefully that [arrest] will deter the students from this act.”

The Dean of students at the KNUST, Leila disclosed, “did not want the police to deal with the students, so he sent the police away and handed the students over to the campus lawyer. But we got their signed confessions with the campus lawyer.”

The director said she is taking them to court and she is seeking US$100,000(GHS170000) jointly from them.