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The Nampally court on Wednesday, November 19, sent iBomma administrator Immadi Ravi to police custody for 5 days.

The court issued the order after examining the police request seeking seven days of custodial interrogation. Ravi was arrested on November 14 after he landed in Hyderabad from France.

The Enforcement Directorate has also stepped into the investigation, probing money laundering and related financial violations in the operations of the iBomma website.

Ravi, the mastermind behind the iBomma/Bappam piracy ecosystem, had data of 50 lakh subscribers and about 21,000 movies on his hard disks. He was involved in the piracy of new film releases, causing a massive loss to the film industry.

He was also found diverting lakhs of users from these piracy portals to illegal online betting platforms such as 1win and 1xbet.

According to police, through this illegal ecosystem of piracy and betting promotions, the accused earned approximately Rs 20 crore. With the proceeds, he purchased 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.