Odisha cable operator nabbed in JioStar piracy swoop

ODISHA: Odisha police have raided a cable operator in Korei, Jajpur district, after a complaint from JioStar blew the lid off an alleged signal-theft racket running under the broadcaster’s nose.

The FIR, lodged under section 303(2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, and sections 37, 51, 63 and 65 of the Copyright Act, 1957, accuses the operator of pirating JioStar’s television channels and reselling them to unwitting subscribers.

The raid that followed was no small haul. Officers seized nine modulators, twenty DTH set-top boxes, one optical node and one mixer — the plumbing of a jerry-rigged retransmission operation. The accused was hauled in for questioning.

The trick, investigators allege, was elegantly crude: sourcing broadcast feeds off consumer DTH boxes meant strictly for home viewing, then piping them straight into the cable network for commercial gain. Electronic evidence filed with the complaint is said to nail down the unauthorised transmission in black and white.

Since the raid, the pirated feed has gone dark. Post-enforcement checks show no fresh signs of JioStar’s channels being siphoned off in the area.

The message from rights holders and the police is blunt: piracy networks feeding off premium content will be tracked down, raided and shut off — one modulator at a time.