18 November,2025 10:36 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Chiranjeevi, Ram Charan, Kiara Advani
Actors Chiranjeevi and Nagarjuna, filmmaker SS Rajamouli, and producer Dil Raju met with Hyderabad City Police Commissioner VC Sajjanar on Monday evening to congratulate him on the arrest of Immadi Ravi, the person behind the piracy website iBomma. Chiranjeevi then told the press that films such as Game Changer, OG, and Kingdom have incurred box office losses as a result of this website. An explanation of how a complaint filed about the leak of HIT: The Third Case resulted in a police crackdown on one of India's largest piracy websites.
Chiranjeevi told the reporters after meeting with the commissioner of police, "This individual has caused significant losses to the film industry through the unauthorised distribution of hundreds of films."
He then mentioned films starring his son Ram Charan, brother Pawan Kalyan, and actors Vijay Deverakonda and Naga Chaitanya as having suffered as a result of the website. "At the beginning of the year, Dil Raju's Game Changer, or throughout the year, Kingdom, Thandel, and OG, all these films faced severe losses at the box office due to this man," the filmmaker stated.
Chiranjeevi also discussed how, even as SS Rajamouli strives to make a picture like Varanasi with Mahesh Babu, Priyanka Chopra, and Prithviraj Sukumaran, piracy affects the industry, noting, "Rajamouli is now about to make such a large film. He aims to take Telugu cinema global. At this point, piracy remains a significant barrier. I must applaud the cops for recognising our situation and detaining him."
Pawan Kalyan, the Deputy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, also praised the police and commented on X (previously Twitter), "Arresting the operator of iBomma and Bappam and shutting down these major piracy websites is a welcome development"
On June 5, 2025, the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce's Anti-Video Piracy Cell filed a complaint after Nani's HIT: The Third Case and Sree Vishnu's Single appeared online on the same day they were released in theatres. A follow-up case was filed after Kuberaa was pirated in a similar fashion. The investigation then commenced.
On Friday, the Hyderabad police arrested Immadi Ravi, a major suspect related to the iBomma website. Ravi is accused of overseeing the uploading and piracy of Telugu films and OTT content on the website. He was apprehended at his home in Kukatpally and handed over to the Cybercrime Unit.
Sajjanar opened up about Ravi's arrest, "Be it OG or Kantara Chapter 1, Dude or Mirai, we found all these films on his hard disk. He had 21,000 movies stored on hard disks. If a film was released in the morning, by evening he would upload it onto his website. This man, Immadi Ravi, who carried out all this, is a native of Visakhapatnam. He earned over Rs 20 crore through nefarious ways and even collected private data of 50 lakh people using his site. He ran 61 piracy mirror websites and also carried duplicate IDs and passports."
This comes after the Hyderabad police conducted a blitz, resulting in the arrest of five more piracy suspects. The accused included Ashwani Kumar from Bihar, Cyril Infant Raj from Tamil Nadu, Jana Kiran Kumar from Hyderabad, Sudhakaran from Erode, and Arsalan Ahmed.
