Prominent YouTuber arrested in TN for abusive content online

Tamil Nadu police on Friday arrested a popular YouTuber, Madan, who, along with his wife, faces nearly 200 complaints by social media users for allegedly carrying out obscene chats online with women and minors.

The arrest comes days after another prominent social media face from Tamil Nadu, Kishore K Swamy, was arrested on Monday. Swamy is seen as being backed by many sympathisers of opposition AIADMK and BJP-RSS, as he took on the DMK and its leaders, including late M Karunanidhi and C N Annadurai, with his abusive posts.

A senior police officer with knowledge of Madan’s case said the YouTuber, whose channel ‘Toxic Madan 18+’ had over 8 lakh followers, was arrested by the cyber crime wing of Central Crime Branch from a friend’s house in Dharmapuri, where he was hiding. He is being interrogated, as more complaints are emerging against him, the police said.

“His house in Salem was raided. We seized all his gadgets. He was using Virtual Private Network (VPN) to bypass restrictions on several banned apps,” the officer said. “Besides gadgets, we also seized six vehicles, including two Audi cars. There are two more YouTubers engaged in using child porn; they will be arrested soon.”

Madan allegedly went into hiding after a manhunt was launched following multiple police complaints against him. Police said Madan launched his YouTube channel and other online activities after suffering huge losses in his business.

The officer said: “He managed to get traction with his YouTube channel, in which he used to upload videos of PUBG games. Even after PUBG was banned, he used VPN to access them. There were complaints of him allegedly engaging in obscene online chats with women and children. An anonymous woman, who used to engage in such chats, has now been identified as his wife (Kruthika).”

The officer said there were also complaints against the couple for using an Instagram account to allegedly cheat people. “We are probing all complaints,” the officer said.

Since Madan was ostensibly not cooperating with the probe, his wife Kruthika and relatives were questioned in connection with the cases. Kruthika was arrested on Wednesday since she was the administrator of the online channels he ran.

Madan and Kruthika, in their mid-20s, come from Salem and are engineering graduates. The police said they have been booked under various sections of Information Technology Act and IPC.

Madan and Swamy’s arrests are seen as part of a direction from Chief Minister M K Stalin’s office to act on crimes, especially those against women and children.

Two days ago, a self-styled religious guru, Sri Siva Sankar, was arrested from Delhi — he faces allegations of sexual harassment of students at his own school. There were also half-a-dozen arrests, including that of an athletics coach and a school teacher, after allegations surfaced on Instagram.

Swamy, the other prominent social media face from the state arrested earlier, was notorious for highly defamatory posts and tweets against women journalists and politicians. While his arrest came on a complaint by the DMK’s IT wing over his defamatory videos against Chief Minister Stalin, his father late Karunanidhi and Annadurai, Swamy was also accused of harassing journalists, including women.

Swamy was remanded in judicial custody, and was arrested again on Thursday based on a complaint filed by actress Rohini for defamatory content he allegedly posted online against her and her late husband, the actor Raghuvaran.