The Maharashtra cyber police on May 23 arrested Sunbajan Kayet, the developer of a rogue mobile application, through which his gang allegedly stole most of the content of other paid channels and telecast it on its mobile application. This caused huge losses to the original content creators.
The arrest was made in Bombay after the sessions court and the Bombay high court rejected his anticipatory bail pleas. Earlier, the cyber cell had arrested Thop TV CEO Satish Venkateshwarlu from Telangana, and Jay Panchal on charges of cheating under IPC and various sections of the Information Technology Act and the Copyright Act.
Star India had filed a case against Android software aggregator Thop TV, stating that it was a rogue app providing illegal access to films, shows and live sports on TV, as well as video-on-demand content, without authorisation from the original owners.
Viacom18 Media Pvt. Ltd. had also approached the Maharashtra cyber police to complain that the rogue mobile stand-alone private application Thop TV had been unauthorisedly streaming and transmitting its data and copyright content at discounted prices to the public, causing it heavy losses.