Hyderabad: Immadi Ravi, the main accused behind the iBomma piracy racket, has been granted a conditional bail by the Telangana High Court.
Ravi is not allowed to leave the country without the court’s permission and has been directed to submit his passport to the police. He is also required to appear before the CCS (Central Crime Station) police every day at 11 am.
Ravi was arrested by the CCS police on November 14 last year after he landed in Hyderabad from France.
He is accused of causing losses worth thousands of crores to the Telugu film industry by running a network of 65 mirror websites. He was also found diverting lakhs of users from these piracy portals to illegal online betting platforms such as 1win and 1xbet.
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.
