Rajinikanth in Kabali
A still from Tamil movie Kabali, which was online hours after it hit the screens worldwide. [Picture for representational purpose.]Kabali/Facebook

Tamil Rockers torrent website has been under the police radar for a while and three members from the website were reportedly arrested in Coimbatore. The cops have been in look out of the administrators who operated from different IP addresses.

As per the tweets doing the rounds, Sathish, Bhuvesh and Sreeni from the team running the website are in the police custody. However, there is no official confirmation from the Cyber Crime Cell yet. But the website has been shut.

Tamil Rockers has been a popular torrent site for South Indian movies. Especially, the website had a good collection of pirated copies of the Tamil movies from the last couple of years. It provided high-quality videos as well as ordinary 'camera prints'.

Shockingly, there were instances where movies which were yet to be officially released in theatres had made it to the torrent site after completing the censor formalities, drawing the ire of the film industry.

Apart from allowing users to 'free download' the content, Tamil Rockers had a premium service to cater to its regular visitors. A report by the Hindu says that the website charged Rs 50 per head for the premium account holders to download Malayalam blockbuster Premam (before it was officially released) and made lakhs of rupees from it. The daily had added that a US-based server hosts the website.

However, the film industry will be happy with the crackdown on the website as it has been losing crores of rupees due to piracy.

Meanwhile, regular visitors of Tamil Rockers are sharing their disappointment over the website being shut down. They are also in search of alternatives to the website.