New Delhi - Indian police have arrested
four people on suspicion of leaking an unaired episode of HBO's
hit series "Game of Thrones", police in Mumbai said
on Tuesday.
The wildly popular fantasy drama is already the most pirated
show on television and has been bedevilled by repeated leaks of
episodes before they air.
According to police, three of the accused work for Prime
Focus Technologies, a Mumbai-based company that processes the
series for Indian streaming website Hotstar. The fourth is a
former employee.
The leaking of the episode on August 4, titled "The Spoils
of War," was separate from a recent hack on HBO. That hack
included the theft of proprietary information, such as
programming.
"We received a complaint from Prime Focus Technologies
regarding the leaking of episode 4, series 7," Akbar Pathan,
deputy commissioner of police in the Mumbai cyber crime unit,
told Reuters.
"In the investigation it was revealed that four persons were
involved."
The four have been charged with criminal breach of trust and
computer-related offences. They appeared in court and were
remanded until August 21.
Emmy Award-winning Game of Thrones, which has a huge
following in South Asia, is distributed in India by Star India,
a subsidiary of Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.