According to published reports, the men, who were trying to capitalise on the runaway success of the film, contacted the producers, Arka Mediaworks, and demanded 1.5 million rupees (A$31,250) to prevent them from distributing pirated copies of the film.

Arka contacted the police who advised them to ask for proof that a copy of the film had indeed been made, upon which a portion of a HD version of the film was sent to the distributors.

Embedded in this part of the film was the watermark that identified the specific theatre from which the source had been obtained to create the copy.

The men behind the extortion bid were arrested; some of them were found to have tried a similar tactic with the first of the Bahubali films in 2015.

In the US, an individual known by the moniker TheDarkOverlord attempted to extort Netflix over the series Orange is the new black in April.

And in March, another individual used a threat to leak the film Boss Baby to extort money from 20th Century Fox and Dreamworks. In this case, the studios paid a sum in Bitcoin but the person behind the extortion was arrested.