Hyderabad: Immadhi Ravi, who was allegedly running film piracy racket from Caribbean islands, has been sent to judicial custody for 14 days.
Ravi, who was arrested by Hyderabad police late on Friday, was produced before a magistrate on Saturday night.
The accused, 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 late on Friday.
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, thinking that the police would not be able to trace him. However, the police managed to track his movements through mobile phone signals and traced him at a location in Kukatpally.
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Cybercrime police will file a petition in Nampally Court on Monday 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 is said to be highly educated and a technical expert. He reportedly acquired the expertise in hacking any server.
Ravi started using his expertise to indulge in piracy of newly released movies. He was allegedly uploading pirated content on the website from the Caribbean islands.
The accused 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 Kuberra surfaced online on their release days.
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A case was booked against on iBomma, Bappam and and 65 mirror websites. These platforms had monthly views of 37 lakh.
Confident that police would never be able to trace him, he had thrown an open challenge to them not to focus on his websites.
On September 29, Hyderabad police arrested five accused who were 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 operating piracy websites and earned nearly Rs 2 crore in cryptocurrency.
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.