The Jeevan Bima Nagar police have registered a case against CEO of Ola Cab and one more person for downloading and playing songs in cabs from films that are yet to be released. According to the police, the accused Bhavish Agarwal, CEO of Ola and Chief Traffic Officer Ankit Bhati downloaded songs from unreleased films through a Singapore-based server and were playing them in their cabs running in different metros.
Based on a complaint by Lahari music company, the police raided the Ola office (ANI Technologies) on JB Nagar and seized the servers and other electronic gadgets that were used to download and transmit songs to the Ola cabs.
According to the complainant, Ola had failed to obtain the required rights from Lahari music company, which owns the songs. The police said that Lahari company had incurred a loss of over ₹ 1 lakh as a result of this.
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However, Agarwal and Bhati have left the country and are said to be in the U.S. and Singapore respectively. Efforts are on to track them, a senior police officer said.
Meanwhile, the legal representatives of ANI Technologies Private Limited (OLA) have issued a statement saying, “Our client, Ola, has at all times conducted its business with the highest legal and ethical standards and will continue to do so in the future as well. The facts that have been reported in the media regarding the management of OLA are unfair and without basis. It appears that the management of Ola has been dragged into this issue with a mala fide intention. We are confident that our client will stand vindicated of these allegations. We have taken appropriate legal steps to protect our client's interests and the matter is now before the courts.”