Immadi Ravi
Hyderabad: Immadi Ravi, the mastermind behind the iBomma/Bappam piracy ecosystem, was to 14-day judicial remand by the Nampally court on Wednesday, November 26.
According to reports, the cybercrime police have registered a total of 5 cases against him, and prisoner transit warrants have been filed in the remaining three cases.
On November 19, the Nampally court allowed police to take Ravi in custody for five days for questioning.
Through his network of 65 mirror websites, Ravi is accused of causing losses worth thousands of crores to the Telugu film industry. He was also found diverting lakhs of users from these piracy portals to illegal online betting platforms such as 1win and 1xbet.
He was arrested by the police on November 14 after he landed in Hyderabad from France.
Investigation revealed that he had data of 50 lakh subscribers and about 21,000 movies on his hard disks. His operations earned him approximately Rs 20 crore which he used to purchase plots and flats and maintained a balance of Rs 3.5 crore in his bank account, which has now been frozen by the police.
Ravi created the iBomma piracy website in 2019, using his background in web hosting and development. During the COVID-19 lockdown, the platform exploded in popularity by offering newly released films in HD for free, drawing nearly 5 million users per month.
“To evade blocking by authorities, he created dozens of alternate domains, used Cloudflare masking, and hosted servers in the Netherlands and Switzerland. He eventually expanded operations by launching the Bappam website in 2022,” Hyderabad police commissioner VC Sajjanar stated in a press conference.
This post was last modified on November 26, 2025 6:20 pm