No bail for engineer who ‘leaked’ Game of Thrones episode

The bail plea of 26-year-old Abhishek Ghildiyal was rejected with the court observing that investigation of such offences was a “difficult” task for the investigating agency and that the case was at the initial stage

A sessions court has rejected the bail application of an IT professional arrested for allegedly leaking an episode of popular TV series Game of Thrones. The bail plea of 26-year-old Abhishek Ghildiyal was rejected with the court observing that investigation of such offences was a “difficult” task for the investigating agency and that the case was at the initial stage. Ghildiyal, along with three other Bengaluru-based IT professionals, was arrested by the BKC cyber police last month for allegedly leaking the fourth episode from the recently concluded season seven of the show.

The fourth episode of Game of Thrones was leaked online on August 4 before its official airing on August 7. The cyber police registered an FIR and investigation led them to Prime Focus Technologies, the agency contracted by Star India Private Limited to store and process data. In India, Star India’s streaming service, Hotstar, also aired the show along with HBO.

Prime Focus accepted that the leak had taken place at its end and named its employee Ghildiyal along with a former employee, Mohammed Suhel and two others for the leak. Ghildiyal, during his bail arguments, submitted that he was being falsely implicated as he was about to leave the company for better prospects. The prosecution, however, claimed that the episode was stored on a software named CLEAR which was accessed by Suhel on August 3. The investigators claimed that at the same time, it was also accessed by Ghildiyal from Bengaluru using an admin password.

“The applicant (Ghildiyal) is a software engineer with the informant company… There is no dispute that he was having user ID and password. The record shows that the applicant has accessed the disputed file and at the same time Mohammed Suhel has also accessed the file. It is also seen that the link was also sent to other accused and it was spread all over the Internet. Now a days, new inventions in Internet activities are being developed daily. Therefore, investigation of such type of offences is a difficult task before investigating agency…

At this stage, if the applicant is released on bail and he being software test engineer the possibility of tampering of evidence cannot be ruled out,” the court observed while rejecting bail. Ghildiyal was booked under sections 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code.