Netflix has managed to leave a Kerala man living in the UAE vexed after it mistakingly used his mobile number in its newly launched web series Sacred Games 2. Kunhabdulla CM, a 37-year-old Keralite who works for an oil company in the UAE has been receiving unwanted calls from all over the world, since the web series flashed his number to be that of a 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.
Unaware of the popular series on Netflix, Kunhabdulla said, “What’s Sacred Games? A video game? I work from 8 am to 7 pm. I don’t have time for such things.”
“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…Who is Isa? I don’t have anything to do with him,” he said. The Indian fears that the mistaken identity might get him in trouble. Fearing he might be now be mistaken for an infamous gangster, he said: “he will be detained at the airport and questioned over a possible mistaken identity.”
Sacred Games 2, the popular web series, mistakenly made the Keralite’s number public after it shows an uncover Indian agent from Kenya, handing over a small chit to Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui- playing the role of a gangster in the Indian web television thriller series) bearing the number of the gangster, Isa played by Saurabh Sachdeva in the show. While the digits were not visible on paper in the screen, the gaffe happened as the subtitles give it away.
Netflix has issued an apology for this blooper, saying that they had removed Kunhabdulla’s number from the show. “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.
The sensational web series based on Vikram Chandra’s 2006 novel of the same name, was caught in controversy soon after its release. Delhi BJP spokesperson Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga had filed a police complaint against filmmaker Anurag Kashyap (the newfound cultural hero of the ultra-left wing, who has a long history of abusing people and resorting to fake news on social media) for allegedly insulting religious sentiments of the Sikh community in the second season of the web series ‘Sacred Games’ on Netflix.
In his complaint, Bagga has alleged that “In the said Web-Series, the Accused has intentionally and deliberately depicted a Scene in which a character belonging to the Sikh community (played by Actor Saif Ali Khan) removes his Kada and throws it away in a disrespectful and insulting manner.”
Akali Dal MLA Manjinder S Sirsa has also objected to the scene, demanding it to be removed.
The first season of the sensational web series, which had released on July 2018, also almost immediately made the headlines for allegedly ‘defaming the Congress party’ over the Shah Bano case.