“Sacred Games” faux pas gives Kerala man in UAE shivers, sleepless nights

PTI, Aug 20, 2019, 3:30 PM IST

Dubai: An Indian man in Sharjah is having sleepless nights as his phone keeps ringing with unwanted calls from around the world after his mobile number was flashed during the second season of the blockbuster web series “Sacred Games” on Netflix.

Kunhabdulla CM, a 37-year-old Keralite who works for a local oil company, had his phone number flashed as fictional gangster Sulaiman Isa’s number in the first episode of the new season released on August 15.

“I have been getting incessant calls on my phone for the last three days from India, Pakistan, Nepal, the UAE and around the world. I don’t know what is happening,” Kunhabdulla told the Gulf News.

“Hearing my phone ring sends shivers down my spine. I want to cancel my number. I want this problem to go away,” he said.

Kunhabdulla has never heard of “Sacred Games”, the popular series on Netflix starring award-winning actors like Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Khan plays a Sikh cop in the series while Siddiqui is a Mumbai-based crime lord.

“What’s Sacred Games? A video game? I work from 8 am to 7pm. I don’t have time for such things,” Kunhabdulla said.

“I got more than 30 calls today [Sunday] and it’s draining my battery. In the last one hour, I got five calls asking for someone called Isa…Who is Isa? I don’t have anything to do with him,” he said.

Kunhabdulla’s number went public in the scene where an undercover Indian agent from Kenya hands a chit to Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui) bearing the number of dreaded gangster Isa.

Although the number was not visible on the small piece of paper, the subtitles gave it away.

Shortly after the story was published, Netflix, the American media-services provider and production company, wrote to the Gulf News, saying that they had removed Kunhabdulla’s number.

“We apologise for any inconvenience caused. As soon as we were alerted to the situation, we resolved the issue and removed the phone number from the subtitles,” Netflix said in a statement to Gulf News on Monday.