Movie Piracy Kingpin Stored 21,000 Pirated Films

Hyderabad: Immadi Ravi, prime accused in the iBomma movie piracy network scandal, had set up 65 mirror websites and stored nearly 21,000 pirated movies on his hard disks, causing thousands of crores of loss to the Telugu film industry, police said on Monday. Apart from running a piracy network, he also promoted online betting platforms and developed relations with international crime networks, creating a dual criminal ecosystem.

Briefing media persons on Monday about the arrest of the piracy racket’s kingpin on Saturday, city police commissioner V.C. Sajjanar said the arrests are the result of a comprehensive investigation into the piracy of new Telugu films, including ‘Kantara Chapter 1’, ‘Dude’, and ‘Mirai’, which were uploaded to illegal websites operated under iBomma and their extensions.

Ravi had taken citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, an island nation in the Caribbean sea, and his associates were Duddela Shivajee, a website developer, and Susarla Prashanth, both aged 27. Ravi was allegedly found diverting lakhs of users from piracy websites to illegal betting platforms such as 1win, 1xbet, and others — a criminal operation that resulted in massive financial exploitation of the public.

After Ravi’s arrest, Sajjanar said, cyber experts uncovered a multi-layered fraud involving huge flows of illegal funds. Owing to the financial nature of the crime, the case will be escalated to the CBI and Enforcement Directorate, as Ravi operated not only in India but also maintained international links and a subscriber base of nearly 50 million users.

“Forensic teams found concrete technical evidence against the prime accused. It was discovered that he set up 65 mirror websites and stored nearly 21,000 pirated movies on his hard disks,” Sajjanar added.

As Internet access became cheaper and OTT platforms like Netflix and Hotstar became popular, he conceived the idea of creating a free high-quality movie streaming website, earning revenue through advertisements, police said. The rapidly growing online gaming and betting platforms were targeted for advertisement partnerships. Using his technical expertise in hosting and development, he created the iBomma piracy website in 2019.

The iBomma website gained rapid popularity during the Covid-19 lockdown. Anti-piracy and copyright authorities repeatedly blocked its primary domains. To evade this, the accused created multiple new domain extensions and frequently shifted the website to foreign servers to remain outside Indian jurisdiction, Sajjanar said.

As his income increased, Ravi allegedly expanded and strengthen his illegal operations. He deployed physical servers in countries such as the Netherlands and Switzerland to ensure uninterrupted streaming of pirated content. This made tracing and blocking extremely difficult for law enforcement agencies.

Ravi collaborated with online gaming and betting platforms such as 1win and 1xbet and diverted users from iBomma to these sites. Users clicking on the site two or three times were automatically redirected them to betting platforms. He placed prominent pop-ups and advertisements that redirected users to illegal betting apps, earning affiliate commissions based on clicks, registrations, and deposits.

Many of these betting platforms prompted users to download malicious APK files that infected their devices. These malware apps captured sensitive data such as banking passwords, photos, and OTPs. The stolen data was later sold to cybercriminals and used for digital arrest scams, investment frauds, identity theft, and unauthorized trading, police said.

To evade Indian law, Ravi renounced his Indian citizenship and obtained citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis. He frequently travelled to the Netherlands, Switzerland, the USA, Thailand, France, and Dubai to collaborate with betting operators.

Immadi Ravi gave free movies on his piracy website, collected data of users, and led them to betting apps and website, police said.

Immadi Ravi is a 39-year-old web designing expert. He studied BSc (Computers) and MBA.

In 2010, he founded ER Infotech, a web services firm specialising in domain registration, hosting, and website development, in Hyderabad.

He has created and managed over 900 websites.

In 2019, he created the iBomma piracy website, and in 2022, Bappam.

The website gained popularity by offering free services during the Covid lockdown.

Ravi embedded malware within pirated movie files to collect data of users who downloaded or streamed the content.

The websites also led to betting apps.

He purchased physical servers in Amsterdam and Switzerland.

He registered 110 domain names related to iBomma and BappamTV using the Porkbun domain registrar.

He stored about 21,000 movies, ranging from ‘The Godfather’ (1972) to ‘OG’ (2025).

He downloaded movies from OTT platforms on the first day of release using third-party applications designed to bypass protections. He purchased pirated copies from underground sources.

He used Cloudflare services to conceal server details and prevent direct blocking,

Ravi had taken citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, an island nation in the Caribbean sea, and made frequent trips to several countries

Police said apart from earnings from illegal betting apps, Ravi earned close to `20 crore through piracy. Police have seized `3 crore from his accounts so far.