NEW DELHI: Bharti Airtel has accused a former employee of stealing confidential company data for the benefit of rival soon-to-belaunched Reliance Jio Infocomm, in what appears to be a prelude to a bitter battle on the ground between two telcos helmed by India’s top billionaires.The country’s biggest mobile operator has filed a police complaint saying that Yasir Majid , who left its employment in April this year, had before leaving the firm downloaded and copied confidential information for the possible use of Jio.Sunil Mittal-owned Airtel is a pan-India GSM operator and faces a competitive threat from Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio, the telecom unit of Reliance Industries, which is set to launch commercial 4G operations around December this year.Jio is widely expected to make a dramatic entry with a disruptive tariff structure and existing operators expect it to trigger a fresh round of blood-letting on multiple fronts in the already hyper competitive mobile market."(Yasir Majid) after having been relieved from the services of the company (Airtel), took up employment with M/s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd…It thus became evident that the said Mr Yasir Majid downloaded, copied and extracted the aforementioned confidential financial data/information of the company for his own use and the use thereof by his current employer M/s Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., who is a business competitor of the company," said the first information report (FIR) filed by the police, a copy of which was viewed by ET.Majid had joined Jio on April 27, 2015.The FIR dated June 22 and filed in the Infocity police station in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, further states: "This confidential information, being commercially sensitive, is quite valuable for the business competitor of the company and can be effectively used to form its business plan and strategy."Reliance Jio said it was looking into the matter. "As a responsible corporate, Reliance Jio lays the greatest emphasis on ethical conduct by all its employees. It is an integral part of our Corporate Value System. We will inquire into this matter," a spokesperson for Reliance Jio Infocomm said in a statement.In its FIR, Airtel said that Majid, who was with the company for nearly 10 years in Jammu & Kashmir, was transferred to Odisha on March 2 as the distribution head of the circle. Majid subsequently resigned his position on April 13, to be effective April 24.On May 26, the information security team at Airtel detected that on April 24 "at 12.27 AM, some documents/data was unauthorisedly, dishonestly and fraudulently transmitted/transferred by the accused Mr Yasir Majid, using his official computer resource (laptop)… while he was still in the employment of the company to his personal email… and he also uploaded/copied some documents", Airtel said in its FIR.Data that were unauthorisedly transferred included details of locations of Airtel’s base stations used to transmit airwaves and plans for future installations of such equipment, "highly confidential" financial information about the company’s BTS wise activation gross revenue details for the Jammu & Kashmir service area and a power point presentation used at the zonal business manager’s meeting on February 15.Speaking to ET, Majid denied doing anything wrong. "I have already told Airtel twice today (Wednesday) that I did not transfer any data. I have done nothing illegal. They (Airtel) said they will again have a chat with me tomorrow (Thursday)." He added that Jio authorities hadn’t spoken to him on this matter.