British grime artist Jme has had a tweet from 2012 removed following a copyright claim by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The 31-year-old, who was born in Hackney, revealed the news in a series of surreal tweets on Sunday morning.

Just got an email, a tweet of mine from 5 years ago has been removed due to a copyright claim from the Board of Control for Cricket in India — Jme (@JmeBBK) 19 March 2017

Bizarrely, the copyright claim appears to relate to Australia’s current tour of India.

It is unclear as to what the content of the original tweet was, but it seems as though the BCCI’s willingness to clamp down on illegal coverage and footage of the ongoing Test series may have gone too far.

Jme added that the email gave the following description as to how his tweet broke the BCCI’s copyright laws: “audiovisual footage and production content relating to cricket matches of the Australia tour of India 2017.”

Man thinks I was streaming a 2017 cricket match in 2012. Ffs — Jme (@JmeBBK) 19 March 2017

Although Jme has not specified, it is likely that the claim relates to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

This law contains what is called the “safe-harbour” provision, which protects a service provider like Twitter from monetary damages from infringing activity of its users so long as it meets certain conditions.

If Twitter receives a DMCA takedown notice for material that infringes copyright, such as a link to an illegal streaming site, they must remove it to avoid being sued for copyright infringement.

And the BCCI employed a Bangalore company as long ago as 2008 to scour the internet for content and links that might infringe copyright.

The organisation has a history of issues with copyright and media rights. In 2012, Sky Sports covered England’s Test series in India from their London studio after the BCCI demanded an additional £500,000 to broadcast from inside their grounds.

This led to a bizarre situation in which commentators Nasser Hussain, David Lloyd and Ian Botham, among others, were left with no control over the pictures being shown by host broadcaster Star TV. Throughout the series, Sky’s commentary team was working from the start of play – at around 3am – and were visibly exhausted by the end of the tour.

Indeed, the BBC’s Test Match Special came close to doing the same, although in their case a deal was eventually struck.

Jme’s links with cricket as a sport are not entirely clear, although in 2015 he replied to user @T33EKO’s question “what cricket team do u support, say Pakistan” [sic] with the simple response “Pakistan”.