Cybercrime investigators in Hyderabad have ramped up their scrutiny of Immadi Ravi, the alleged architect of the sprawling iBomma piracy network, securing five days of custody on Thursday to extract details on his shadowy collaborators and international operations.
Ravi, who was apprehended last week upon his return from Europe, faced hours of recorded interrogation focusing on the technical operatives behind the site’s content uploads and the shadowy figures who benefited from harvested user data.
Authorities revealed that despite initial takedowns, several mirror domains have resurfaced, prompting a dedicated task force to deploy blocking tools and trace promoters through digital footprints left on seized devices. The custody extension, granted by the Nampally court, builds on Ravi’s formal arrest on November 15, when officers from the Central Crime Station swooped in at Hyderabad’s airport as the 35-year-old disembarked from France.
Operating under the radar from Saint Kitts and Nevis since renouncing his Indian citizenship in 2022, Ravi had evaded capture for years while amassing a fortune estimated at ₹20 crore from illicit streams, including ad revenues and redirects to underground betting platforms. Police froze over ₹3 crore across 35 linked bank accounts, with probes now extending to cryptocurrency trails funneled into his non-resident external holdings.
At the heart of the inquiry lies the staggering scope of Ravi’s enterprise, which launched in 2019 and exploded during the pandemic lockdowns. Forensic analysis of confiscated hard drives uncovered archives of more than 21,000 pirated films, predominantly Telugu blockbusters like Godfather and OG, distributed across 110 domains and 66 mirror sites to dodge enforcement efforts.
The platform drew roughly 5 million monthly visitors, many lured by compressed, high-definition rips hosted on Cloudflare servers that thwarted easy shutdowns, a tactic shared by 95% of similar illicit portals.
Beyond bootlegging, Ravi allegedly siphoned personal details from 5 million users, peddling this trove to hackers and gaming syndicates for targeted scams, a practice officials branded as a ‘grave peril to national digital integrity.’
Interrogators pressed Ravi on his globe-trotting exploits to the UAE, USA, Netherlands, Thailand, and beyond, where he forged alliances with content sourcers via Telegram channels and inked deals with betting outfits like 1win and 1xbet. These partnerships allegedly funneled traffic from iBomma to predatory apps, ensnaring over 3.7 million unwitting visitors in high-stakes wagers masked as bonuses.
One co-accused, Duddela Shivajee, nabbed in September, remains in custody after a failed bail bid, while three others linked to auxiliary sites were collared earlier this year. The Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate have joined the fray, eyeing transnational money laundering angles.
Beneath the cyber saga lies a personal unraveling that propelled Ravi into this underworld. Sources close to the probe paint a picture of marital strife and familial estrangement. Divorce filings from Europe coincided with his homecoming, reportedly driving him from legitimate pursuits into vengeful digital disruption. What began as a grievance-fueled side hustle morphed into a multimillion-rupee empire, inflicting billions in damages on Tollywood through slashed theatrical earnings and eroded OTT subscriptions.
The Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce hailed the bust as a ‘vital shield for creators.’
Yet online forums buzz with ambivalence; some netizens decried the crackdown as elitist overreach, dubbing Ravi a ‘reluctant Robin Hood’ for democratizing access amid soaring ticket prices. Industry heavyweights, however, warned of copycats exploiting unpatched vulnerabilities in content protection, urging stricter global pacts.