Over 19 websites owned by Tamil Rockers have been blocked by Google after five admins of these domains were taken into custody by Kerala police for piracy. The websites include tamilrockers.in, tamilrockers.me, tamilrockers.is, tamilrockers.ac, tamilrockers.co, and other similar domain names.
The websites were used for uploading new pirated South Indian movies and members made as much as ₹1 crore over the last few months.
The police had taken the five culprits into custody on Thursday after tracking an email sent by an advertisement company to one Akhil, which had reportedly mentioned having a connection with the piracy website.
“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 Tamil Rockers. We got the information about Tamilrockers through this ad company,” said Anti-Piracy Cell SP B.K. Prasanthan Kani.
The Ad company was connected in a similar case back in 2016.
The accused — TNRockers owner Prabhu, DVD Rockers owner Johnson and his accomplice Maria John, and Karthi from Villupuram along with his accomplice, Suresh — were nabbed by the police by tracing their bank accounts.
Their laptops, mobiles, and such hardware were also confiscated.
“All the gang members were technically qualified. It even included M.Sc. and B.Sc. holders in computer science. They used to record movies in pieces from various parts of the world and join it. We are trying to trace more members of the gang including Karthi’s brothers,” Prasanthan told Deccan Chronicle.