3 Censor ex-staff held in Premam case

Thiruvananthapuram: Anti-piracy officials have arrested three temporary workers at the Censor Board regional office here for stealing the Censor copy of the movie Premam on a pen drive and circulating it.

They were identified as Arun Kumar, 26, of Karakulam, Lijin, 25, of Irinchayam, Nedumangad, and Kumaran, 30, of Pachalloor.

Rumours were afloat that they were terminated from the job after the pirated version of the megahit movie went viral. Board officials claimed that they left after the expiry of their job contracts.

Kumar, who was working with the board’s office at Thiruvallam for around two years, allegedly copied the movie on May 19 before sharing it for limited viewing among the staff and friends.

“He used to regularly steal movies from here and circulate within his circles. In this case, the movie became popular and was shared in an uncontrollable manner,” anti-piracy SP Prateesh Kumar told Deccan Chronicle.

“We have seized the laptops and pen drives used by suspects and have taken images of the virtual pieces of evidence. The untouched original  ones will now be sent to the court and forensics officials”.

He said one more person would soon be arrested. The breakthrough came after a man, Sadiq, and two minors from Kollam were caught for uploading the movie.

The team trailing the chain of people involved in piracy subsequently reached an NRI from Kadakkal who received the movie through Whatsapp and the sender was Kumar’s friend.

Kumar was under their scanner since the probe began. “On one hand, we were probing the studios where editing was done and on the other we had censor board employees. We went back and forth through the chain of devices through which it was circulated and confirmed their involvement,” the SP said.

The trio was taken to custody by a team headed by DYSP Iqbal and CI Prithviraj in the wee hours of Monday.

The movie directed by Alphonse Putharen, touted to become the biggest grosser of all time in Malayalam, has minted Rs 30 crore in just one month after its release on May 29.

It suddenly suffered a setback after the censor copy went viral on free downloading sites and its producer Anwar Rasheed filed a police case.