Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala police on Tuesday arrested two higher secondary school students and took into custody another teenager as investigators made headway in the search for those behind the piracy of the super-hit Malayalam movie, Premam.

The film’s director, Anwar Rasheed had filed a complaint with the police alleging widespread circulation of his movie on the internet, apparently after copies were pirated from the censorship board or one of the post-production work studios.

Rasheed went on to accuse the Film Exhibitors’ Federation of Kerala and other film industry associations of doing little to tackle the piracy menace and resigned from all the industry association bodies.

Acting on Rasheed’s complaint, the anti-piracy wing of the state police on Tuesday arrested two higher secondary students from Kollam who are accused of uploading copies of Premam on the internet. Police believe the duo has links to the pirated compact disc lobby, and that they may have committed such an offence before.

The two were later brought to the state capital. They are suspected to have created a false internet protocol address to upload the movie. Another student who is a suspect in the piracy case is in police custody.

However, Kerala Film Exhibitors’ Association president, Liberty Basheer said his association would go ahead with its decision to shut down theatres in the state as scheduled on July 9 as a token strike against widespread piracy that is affecting the Malayalam film industry. He said the exhibitors’ association would hold bigger strikes if the government did not intensify action against film pirates.

The origin of the film’s leakage is yet to be ascertained even as fingers have been pointed at the censor board, as well as the studios owned by Priyadarshan and B. Unnikrishnan. Both Priyadarshan and Unnikrishnan have denied the allegations.

A copy of the film is believed to have leaked before May 19. It is yet to be verified how the schoolboys got hold of it, and whether they have links to international piracy gangs.

Liberty Bashir said he did not believe that Priyadarshan or Unnikrishnan or the censor board would be a party to piracy, but added that if some employee in their organisation did such a thing the moral responsibility would lie with the organisation. He said Premam had the potential to hit the Rs500 million (Dh28.89 million) collection mark, which may now be missed owing to the spread of pirated versions on the internet.

Days after Premam was pirated, the Tamil movie Papanasam, which is a remake of the successful Malayalam movie, Drishyam was also pirated and uploaded on the internet.