The Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) was reportedly breached, with over 500 titles, including feature films and more, affected. According to an exclusive report of The Hindu, the breach seemingly originated from the e-Cinepramaan portal. Detailed film scripts, censor board cut orders, confidential business agreements and documents of filmmakers that were in the possession of the CBFC form a major chunk of the exposed media. These filmmakers were reportedly seeking a clearance certificate for their movies, which is mandatory to screen films in theatres across India. The Indian news outlet reported that the leaked contents were accessible online.
The dates of these documents range from December 2025 to August 2026 and were freely accessible on the website Internet Archive (a non-profit library of free movies, texts, music and more) before being taken down earlier this month. In response to The Hindu’s report, the office of the CBFC chairperson Shashi Shekhar Vempati said: “…no trace has been found of the certification-related documents that were claimed to have been accessed,” and said it was investigating the alleged unauthorised access.
The cybercrime authorities and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) were notified of the incident, the board said. Additionally, a security audit of the portal was being conducted. The report noted that the distribution agreements for the Brazilian film “The Secret Agent” and the Hollywood film “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” were also exposed in the leak.
Further, three agreements that were affected revealed the licensing fees of films, which could reportedly weaken negotiation terms between the involved stakeholders of the film industry, such as producers, distributors and more, and reveal information that may be commercially valuable. Such data may include information around revenue sharing, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), obligations, terms for release in India and more. This may hamper upcoming contracts.
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For context, the e-Cinepramaan portal was introduced in 2017 to digitise film certification work. Internet Archives, the website where these records were allegedly available, reportedly told the news outlet that these records were removed and a complaint was filed with the concerned authorities. CBFC noted that individual accounts of filmmakers remain unaffected by the leak.