Hyderabad: A 29-year-old man was arrested by the Hyderabad cybercrime police in connection with a complaint filed by the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce (TFCC) regarding piracy of the movie ‘Single’.
The accused has been identified as Jana Kiran Kumar, a resident of NGO colony, Vanasthalipuram, Ranga Reddy district. He works as an AC technician and hails from East Godavari, Andhra Pradesh.
On June 5, a complaint was registered by Yarra Manindra Babu, representing the anti-video piracy cell of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce (TFCC), stating that the movie ‘Single’, released on May 9, was illegally pirated and circulated online on the same day as its release.
The pirated versions of the movie were traced to popular piracy platforms like 1TamilBlasters, 5MoviezRulz, and 1TamilMV. Preliminary forensic watermarking pointed towards leakage from a theatre.
According to a police press note, the accused used to pirate movies for the piracy group 1TamilMV. He had contacted them through their recruitment email after coming across them on the internet.
He then sent them a proposal offering to source pirated Telugu content. Kumar then started recording movies in theatres, concealing his phone in his shirt pocket.
Afterwards, Kumar used to share the links through Telegram to avoid being traced. He used to get paid about USD 300-400 in bitcoin/cryptocurrency, which he used to convert into Indian currency using platforms like ZebPay and Coin DCX.
Kumar has been accused of leaking around 40 movies in one and a half years from various theatres across Hyderabad. In his last piracy attempt, he recorded a film in May and shared it with 1TamilMV.
The accused has been booked under sections 66(C), 66(E) of the IT Act; BNS sections 318(4), read with 3(5), 338; section 63, 65 of the Copyright Act and sections 6-AA, 6AB, 7(1A) of Cinematograph Act, 1952 (2008).
TFCC has estimated a staggering Rs 3,700 crore loss to the Telugu film industry in 2024 due to piracy, and has urged swift investigation and action against broader piracy networks.
