The movie ‘Arjun Patiala’ released on 26 July and that day turned out to be a nightmare for New Delhi resident Puneet Agarwal. Because Sunny Leone’s character in the film dictated his phone number as hers! What followed was him being hounded with 150-200 calls a day, asking to speak with the actress and demanding ‘dirty favours’. The situation became so intolerable that he had to file a police complaint.
Kunhabdulla CM, a 37-year-old man hailing from Kerala and working in UAE, has found himself in a similar quandary after his phone number was shown on the second season of ‘Sacred Games’.
In the show, Ganesh Gaitonde (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui) receives the contact information of gangster Sulaiman Isa (Saurabh Sachdeva). And due to some crazy mix-up, the number is identical to Mr.Kunhabdulla’s. The Indian Express quoted him saying,
“I got more than 30 calls today [Sunday] and it’s draining my battery. In the last hour, I got five calls asking for someone called Isa. I even went to the telephone operator’s office to report this. I just want to somehow cancel this number. I don’t want to face any problems. Who is Isa? I don’t have anything to do with him.”
The man wants no piece of this and for good reason. He is concerned that the authorities might misunderstand the situation and detain him at the airport.
“What’s Sacred Games? A video game? I work from 8 am to 7 pm. I don’t have time for such things. This is a problem that refuses to go away. I am really worried whether I am entangled in problems that aren’t my choice.”
He further added,
“This has created so much tension in my life. I am just an earnest worker trying to do my job here. I don’t know what to do.”
Thankfully, Netflix has apologised for the goof up and removed the digits in question from the subtitles. We hope that the unintended victim doesn’t have to give any more privacy ka ‘balidaan‘.