The Kerala police on Wednesday, arrested members of two popular piracy websites, that have been accused of releasing pirated copies of several films in the last few months.
The anti-piracy cell of the Kerala police arrested 5 people allegedly belonging to two different piracy websites - 3 from Tamilrockers and 2 from DVD rockers.
Karthi, who the police claim is the main administrator of Tamilrockers, was arrested along with Prabhu and Suresh from Villipuram. Jagan and Johnson who allegedly run DVD rockers were arrested from Thirunelveli. They are both brothers, say police.
The arrests were made after a probe, which went on for several months, to track down the members of both the groups. DVD rockers is said to have released the Malayalam film Ramaleela last year, just days after the film hit the theatres. In Kerala, there are 7 cases already registered against Tamilrockers, including for releasing the Mohanlal fillm Pulimururgan online, say police. Although they allegedly released the pirated version of Aadi recently, no written complaint has been filed with the police.
All five accused have been booked under relevant sections of the Copyright Act and IT Act, and have been remanded to judicial custody. The police believe that there are more people involved in the groups.
According to the police, Karthi, who is reportedly the main admin of Tamilrockers, has earned more than Rs 1 crore in the past few months.
Speaking to TNM, anti piracy cell SP Prasanthan said that an email that a Haryana-based company wrote to Akhil, who was arrested in 2016 in a similar case, helped in tracking members of Tamilrockers.
"This ad company had sent a mail to Akhil, offering to publish ads on the website he was running. In that email, the company happened to mention that they have ties with Tamilrockers. We got the information about Tamilrockers through this ad company," the SP said.
Both the piracy groups had bought several domains online through which they allegedly released new films, even if one domain was blocked by the police.
"All these people are young and academically qualified. Karthi holds an MSs degree in computer science and other members are engineers. Jagan, in fact, bought a few properties with the money he and his brother Johnson made from the business," the SP alleged.