The STAR bouquet, switched off on Tuesday over a payment dispute, remained off the Manthan network beam on Thursday. To add to the woes of the 300,000-plus cable homes fed by the service provider, the Sony bunch of channels went off the air on the same network for around four hours in the morning.

While the Manthan management dismissed the Sony blackout as a “technical snag”, RPG Netcom, which distributes STAR and Sony signals in the city, said the channels were yanked off for payment default. “Manthan owes more than Rs 30 lakh to Sony, of which, our immediate demand was Rs 19 lakh,” said a top Netcom official.

Having sunk more than Rs 20 crore in CAS and pushed to the wall by more than Rs 15 crore outstanding from defaulters, the RPG Group service provider has decided to pull out all stops to recover dues. While the Sony bouquet was restored after Manthan officials forked out Rs 14 lakh, the Netcom brass refused to budge an inch on the STAR stalemate.

To turn the heat on operators stealing its network signal, Netcom has formed a surveillance cell headed by a former police officer. “We have identified 24 places from where our signal is being stolen, and errant operators will be behind bars in a few days,” warned Netcom CEO Amit Nag.