The director filed a police complaint. The Cyber Crime Cell traced the upload to a single IP address. They busted down Ramesh’s door in Mylapore at 5 AM. Ramesh, shaking, confessed everything. He was arrested. The headline in The Hindu read: "Projectionist Arrested for Leaking Ananda Thandavam."

The final cut of Ananda Thandavam was a thing of impossible beauty. Director K. Balachandran had spent three years and his entire family fortune on the film. It was a surrealist musical, a fever dream set in a flooded Chennai of 2099, where a classical dancer (the legendary Mohanakrishnan, in his final role) battles a rogue AI that feeds on human sorrow. The climax, a 20-minute solo dance on a floating stage of solar panels, was called "Ananda Thandavam"—The Dance of Bliss.

Within 47 minutes, the file was live.