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In a major development in the iBomma Tollywood movie piracy case, Immadhi Ravi, who was allegedly running the film piracy racket, has been arrested in Hyderabad. He was sent to judicial custody for 14 days.
Ravi was arrested by Hyderabad police late on Friday, November 14, and was produced before a magistrate on Saturday night.
Ravi, who was allegedly involved in uploading and distributing pirated Telugu and other regional language films and OTT content on piracy websites iBomma and Bappam, was later shifted to Chanchalguda Central Prison.
Ravi, who had thrown an open challenge to the police to arrest him, was picked up from a house in the Kukatpally area of Hyderabad.
The accused had fled the country on October 1 after police had registered a case against him. He was reportedly in Amsterdam on October 3 and kept changing IP addresses to evade arrest.
He came to Hyderabad a couple of days ago, and the police managed to track his movements through mobile phone signals.
Cybercrime police will file a petition in Nampally Court on November 17 to seek Ravi's custody for seven days for questioning.
Police reportedly seized hundreds of hard disks from the house. After taking the login credentials from the accused, the Cybercrime police also blocked the iBomma and Bappam platforms.
The investigators were checking Ravi's bank accounts and crypto accounts. They hope to gather more information about the piracy rackets during further questioning.
Ravi's network allegedly relied heavily on encrypted Telegram groups, overseas virtual private servers and cryptocurrency payments to mask its activities.
Online gaming and betting websites were used to promote the pirated content, financing the racket in exchange for advertising.
A native of Visakhapatnam, Ravi was allegedly uploading pirated content on the website from the Caribbean islands.
He was allegedly uploading pirated Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi movies and television serials on the websites.
It was on August 30 that the Anti-Video Piracy Cell of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce lodged a complaint with Cybercrime police about film piracy after movies like Single, HIT, and Kubera surfaced online on their release days.
A case was booked against on iBomma, Bappam and 65 mirror websites. These platforms had monthly views of over 37 lakh.
Ravi had then thrown an open challenge to the police not to focus on his websites.
On September 29, Hyderabad police arrested five accused who were allegedly hacking servers to download movies.
The accused include Ashwani Kumar from Bihar, who allegedly hacked servers of digital media companies to steal HD copies.
According to police, Cyril Infant Raj from Tamil Nadu was also operating piracy websites.
Another accused, Jana Kiran Kumar of Hyderabad, reportedly recorded more than 100 films in theatres using concealed mobile devices.
Sudhakaran from Tamil Nadu confessed to recording 35 South Indian films, while Arsalan Ahmed allegedly uploaded pirated films to file-sharing platforms and circulated them through Telegram channels.