Bengaluru: The Jeevan Bima Nagar police have registered a case against the CEO of Ola Cabs and another senior executive of the company on the charge of downloading and playing songs in cabs from films that are yet to be released.
The police said a case has been registered against Bhavish Agarwal, CEO of Ola, and Chief Traffic Officer Ankit Bhati for allegedly downloading songs from yet-to-be-released films through a Singapore-based server and playing them in their cabs in various metros. The police action, under provisions of the Copyright Act 1957, followed a complaint by Lahari Recording Company.
Based on the complaint, the police searched the Ola office (ANI Technologies) in J.B. Nagar and seized servers and other gadgets that were used to download and transmit songs to the cabs, police said. A release from the police said the songs were being downloaded in Prime Play Tab.
According to the police, the company had not obtained the necessary permission from Lahari music, which owns the rights of the songs. The press release also said that the seizure of recording equipment has helped save losses to Lahari to the tune of over Rs. 1 crore. They were being played in cities in Karnataka, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and other States, and in Kolkata in West Bengal where the company operates cab services.
