GoT leak: Bengaluru techies nabbed

[Len]

The Mumbai police have got seven-day custody of four people, including three employees from the Bengaluru branch of a Mumbai-based digital content firm, accused of leaking an episode of fantasy series Game of Thrones online earlier this month.

Investigators claimed they were verifying whether the accused were responsible for other acts of online piracy in the past. A team of Mumbai police arrived in the city last week for initial probe and had instructed the suspects to report at their head office in Andheri where they were formally arrested on Monday.

“An investigation is on and we are verifying the antecedents of the suspects. We have their custody till August 21,” said Akbar Pathan, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mumbai Cyber Cell.

According to Mumbai police, the accused Abhishek Ghadiyal, Bhaskar Joshi, ALok Sharma and Mohammed Suhail had illegally downloaded the fourth episode of the seventh season of the series on August 4, three days prior to its official telecast and converted it into bit Torrent format and uploaded it on the net. Ghadiyal, Bhaskar and Sharma are employees of Prime Focus Technologies, Bengaluru branch, and Suhail was an ex employee at the firm.

“The three accused were employed with the technical division of the firm. The unaired episode scheduled to be streamed on August 7 was accessed by Ghadiyal and then transferred to Suhail. The remaining two helped them transfer it and upload it online on a Torrent website. Their crime got flagged because the Torrent went viral online, otherwise it would have gone unnoticed,” said an officer involved in the probe.

Following the leak, Hotstar, an online video streaming channel owned by Novi Digital Entertainment, a subsidiary of Star India Private Ltd. initiated an internal probe.

Prime Focus Technologies were responsible for the digital content in India. It was soon confirmed that the leak occurred at the Bengaluru office of the firm. Prime Focus has three facilities in the city at JP Nagar, Bilekahalli and Devarbeesanahalli village.

“The firm came forward and registered a complaint after the source of leak was confirmed and we formally arrested the accused persons,” the officer added.