iBomma Ravi moves court to unfreeze Rs 3 crore in bank accounts

Police have described the network as having caused losses running into thousands of crores to the Telugu film industry.

Hyderabad: Emmadi Ravi, the alleged operator of the movie piracy website iBomma, has approached a court here seeking the release of roughly Rs 3 crore frozen in his bank accounts, telling it that the freeze has left him unable to support his family.

Ravi, widely known as “iBomma Ravi,” filed the petition before the 9th Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Court at Nampally, where it was listed for hearing. 

Police had seized his bank accounts and property deposits as part of the investigation into what they have described as one of India’s largest online piracy networks.

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From arrest to bail

Ravi, 39, a native of Visakhapatnam who holds citizenship of the Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, was arrested by the Central Crime Station (CCS) Police from an apartment in Kukatpally in mid-November 2025, shortly after arriving in Hyderabad from France. Police said at the time that they had acted on specific information about his arrival in the city.

He spent close to 90 days in Chanchalguda jail before Justice K Sujana of the Telangana High Court granted him conditional bail on February 17 this year, after the Nampally court had earlier rejected his bail plea. He walked out the following day.

The bail came wrapped in stringent conditions aimed at securing his cooperation with the investigation. He was directed to appear before the investigating officer daily until the charge sheet is filed, surrender his passport and not leave the country, refrain from operating any piracy-related online platform and avoid contacting witnesses or co-accused. Any violation, the court warned, would result in his bail being cancelled.

The case against iBomma Ravi

According to the police, Ravi set up iBomma in 2019, drawing on a background in web hosting and development, and the platform’s popularity surged during the COVID-19 lockdown as it offered newly released films in high definition for free. He is alleged to have expanded the operation with a second site, Bappam, in 2022.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar told a press conference after the arrest that the network ran across more than 65 mirror websites, with domains rotated and traffic masked to evade blocking by authorities and servers hosted in the Netherlands and Switzerland. Investigators said hard drives seized from Ravi held around 21,000 films across multiple languages, along with data on some 50 lakh subscribers.

Beyond piracy itself, police allege the operation funnelled large numbers of users from the piracy portals to illegal online betting platforms, generating revenue through betting advertisements hosted on the sites. Cyber crime officials have said they traced transactions of around Rs 13 crore in the case, with his total earnings estimated at roughly Rs 20 crore. Investigators have also alleged that Ravi obtained identity documents in other people’s names, including a driving licence and PAN card, which were used to open bank accounts.

Cases have been registered against him under provisions of the Information Technology Act and the Copyright Act. Police have described the network as having caused losses running into thousands of crores to the Telugu film industry, and called the arrest a significant breakthrough in their crackdown on digital piracy. 

Two of his associates had been arrested earlier in September 2025.