Chennai: YouTuber Madan, accused of obscene talk in live-streamed game videos, arrested

Madan aka Madan OP enjoys a cult following among youngsters, mostly below 18. With 776K subscribers on YouTube and more than 100K subscribers on Toxic Madan 18+, he live-streamed videos of his gameplay were regularly uploaded.

One of Madan Kumar's YouTube channels.

YouTuber and popular PUBG player Madan Kumar, booked for uploading obscene content online, was arrested by the cybercrime wing of the city police Friday from a hideout in Dharmapuri. Madan’s wife Kruthika was arrested from Salem a couple of days ago.

The couple was allegedly running YouTube channels where online gaming videos with obscene and abusive conversations Madan had with women and minor children were being uploaded. Kruthika was the administrator of these channels. Police seized laptops, tablets, mobile phones from their residence in Chennai.

A native of Salem, Madan had been running the channels and monetizing them from Chennai.

Madan aka Madan OP enjoys a cult following among youngsters, mostly below 18. With 776K subscribers on YouTube and more than 100K subscribers on Toxic Madan 18+, Madan live-streamed gaming videos regularly.

The channel which was started by Madan in 2019 to provide strategy, tricks to play the now-banned PUBG mobile game attracted huge traction due to Madan’s obscene commentary on women during the gameplay.

After PUBG was banned in India, Madan used VPN technology to live-stream his gameplay videos.

Based on a complaint from a resident of Vadapalani, Abishek Ravi, the city police registered a case against Madan and his wife. It is learnt that The Tamil Nadu State Commission for Protection of Child Rights also received numerous complaints about this channel. During the course of the investigation, the police had received close to 160 complaints in connection with the case.

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According to reports, Madan has been booked under Sections including 509, 294 (b) of the IPC, and other sections of the IT Act. Madan will be brought to Chennai where the police would be conducting further inquiries. Apart from Kruthika, voices of other women were also heard in the videos and the police are investigating whether there are more people associated with Madan.

Meanwhile, the Madras High Court on Friday rejected the plea for anticipatory bail in the case moved by Madan a day ago.

Janardhan Koushik

Janardhan Koushik is Deputy Copy Editor of indianexpress.com. He is a New Media journalist with over five years of reporting experience in the industry. He has a keen interest in politics, sports, films, and other civic issues. Janardhan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Communication from SRM Arts and Science College and a PG Diploma in New Media from Asian College of Journalism, one of the top ranked journalism schools in India. He started his career with India Today group as a sub-editor as part of the sports team in 2016. He has also a wide experience as a script-writer having worked for short-films, pilot films as well as a radio jockey cum show producer while contributing for an online Tamil FM. As a multilingual journalist, he actively tracks the latest development in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry utiling his well-established networks to contribute significantly to breaking news stories. He has also worked as a sports analyst for Star Sports. ... Read More

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