'Sacred Games' gives expat in UAE sleepless nights

Sharjah: A Keralite expat in Sharjah has been flooded with unsolicited phone calls from around the world ever since the second season of the hit crime thriller "Sacred Games" released on Netflix on August 15.

The reason being that Kasargode native Kunhabdulla CM's mobile number was shown as fictional gangster Sulaiman Isa's number in the first episode of the new season, the Gulf News reported on Monday night.

"I have been getting incessant calls on my phone for the last three days from India, Pakistan, Nepal, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and around the world. I don't know what is happening.

"Hearing my phone ring sends shivers down my spine. I want to cancel my number. I want this problem to go away," said Kunhabdulla.

Kunhabdulla, 37, works for a local oil company and has never heard of "Sacred Games", the blockbuster web series on Netflix starring award-winning talents Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.

Khan plays a Sikh cop in the TV series while Siddiqui plays a Mumbai-based crime lord.

"What's Sacred Games? A video game? I work from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. I don't have time for such things," he told Gulf News.

"I got more than 30 calls (on Sunday) and it's draining my battery. In the last one hour, I got five calls asking for someone called Isa... Who is Isa? I don't have anything to do with him."

Kunhabdulla's number went public in the scene where an undercover Indian agent from Kenya hands a chit to Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui) bearing the number of dreaded gangster Isa. Although the number was not visible on the small piece of paper, the subtitles gave it away.

Shortly after Gulf News' report was published, Netflix and the production company wrote to the newspaper saying that they have removed Kunhabdulla's number.

"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.