Maharashtra Cyber police have arrested a Hyderabad-based IT engineer Satish Venkateshwarlu, who is the CEO of the Thop TV app. The 28-year-old was arrested for allegedly developing and operating an application to stream pirated content from multiple digital streaming platforms and satellite channels.
A court in Mumbai has sent Satish, who was arrested from his Gurram Gada residence in Telangana, to seven days of police custody.
According to police, the 28-year-old has been running the app for the last two years. This application has lakhs of viewers, including 5,000 paid subscribers.
The cops arrested him after Viacom 18 Media Private Limited along with another broadcaster lodged a complaint with the Maharashtra Cyber police, alleging that an application had been using and broadcasting their content without permission.
The case was registered under Sections 43, 66 and 66B of the Information Technology Act, 2000, Section 63 of Copyright Act, and Section 420 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The investigation found that the accused had developed a standalone pirated application, through which he used to abduct most of the content using its inbuilt API.