Three of them are students; another accused is absconding, say police

A technician in film industry, Padavala Rajesh, and three engineering students were arrested for allegedly circulating pirated copies of the new Telugu movie ‘Geeta Govindam’.

The Guntur Urban police arrested four out of the five accused and seized the material used for duplicating the film and circulating it. A girl student, who was involved in the piracy racket, is absconding. The film starred by Vijay Devarakonda and Rashmika Mandanna, is scheduled for release on August 15. A native of Chirala of Prakasam district, Rajesh, was working as administrator in digital databank in film industry in Hyderabad.

Copied from hard disks

Recently, the producer and other technicians gave the film ‘Geeta Govindam’ to Rajesh for recording and editing. However, the accused copied the film from the hard disks to pen drives and other devices and circulated the pirated copies.A few days ago, Rajesh gave a pirated version of the new film to a girl student, who shared it to her friends. Three other students copied and shared with more friends through mobile phones.

Special teams

Following a complaint lodged by Geeta Arts-2 executive producer G. Satya Venkata Ramanjaneyulu, the police swung into action and formed special teams, said Superintendent of Police Ch. Vijaya Rao.

The teams headed by SIs Narayana and Nagul Meera went to Hyderabad, and seized three laptops, two hard disks, three pen drives and four mobile phones.

“The students were studying third year B. Tech in Koneru Lakshmaiah University (KLU) and VVIT College and were natives of Guntur,” the SP said.