Four arrested in Mumbai over Game of Thrones episode leak

Mumbai Police have arrested four people for leaking an episode from HBO's Game of Thrones television series before it was aired in the country.

Amid HBO hack, Game Of Thrones season 7 episode 4 is the most watched so far

The fourth episode of the fantasy drama television series, The Spoils of War, was leaked from Star India, one of HBO's international distributors, a few days before its official debut on August 6.

While three of the accused -- Abhishek Ghadiyal, Bhaskar Joshi and Alok Sharma -- are current employees of Prime Focus Technologies, the fourth, Mohammed Suhail, is a former staffer.

Star India had confirmed the leak and initiated an investigation.

"We investigated the case and have arrested four individuals for unauthorised publication of the fourth episode from season seven," Deputy Commissioner of Police Akbar Pathan told AFP.

Following the leak, a Star India spokesperson said, "We take this breach very seriously and have immediately initiated forensic investigations at our and the technology partner's end to swiftly determine the cause. This is a grave issue and we are taking appropriate legal remedial action."

The four culprits have been accused of "criminal breach of trust and computer-related offences."

The AFP also said that the case was filed by a Mumbai-based company responsible for storing and processing GoT episodes for an app. These company employees possessed official credentials, which gave them access to the GoT episodes.

Earlier, it was also reported that anonymous hackers had managed to get their hands on a few unaired episodes of GoT. The hackers, who claimed to have access to 1.5 terabytes of the HBO's series, had threatened to release more episodes in the weeks to come.

However, the arrest of the four people in India is not related to the cyber breach of HBO.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that contents of upcoming episodes of Got including the script of Episode five have also been leaked online.

In fact, a section of the Twitterati has been enquiring about the leak of episode 5 as well.