Hyderabad: The cyber crime police of Hyderabad on Monday arrested the alleged mastermind of a large-scale piracy network that ran more than 65 mirror websites and is said to have caused massive losses to the Telugu film industry.
According to a police release issued on Monday, the accused, Ravi Emandi, was also found diverting lakhs of users from piracy websites to illegal betting platforms—an activity that resulted in large-scale financial exploitation of the public.
Top film personalities, including actors Chiranjeevi, Nagarjuna Akkineni and director S S Rajamouli, met Hyderabad Police Commissioner V C Sajjanar and appreciated the efforts of the police.
The arrest follows a comprehensive investigation into the piracy of several newly released Telugu films, including ‘Kantara Chapter 1’ and ‘Mirai’, which were illegally uploaded on a network and its associated extension websites, the release said.
The Anti-Video Piracy Cell of the Telugu Film Chamber of Commerce (TFCC) had earlier reported that several such websites, along with about 65 associated mirror domains, were illegally uploading and distributing copyrighted Telugu films without authorisation.
These platforms were allegedly hosting newly released theatrical and OTT films in HD quality, causing “massive financial losses to producers, distributors, and exhibitors”, it said.
The complaint said the operators frequently changed domains, used Cloudflare for anonymity, and attracted millions of users, resulting in recurring losses to the Telugu film industry.
It sought a full investigation, blocking of the websites, tracing the operators, and legal action.
During the investigation, police identified three individuals as prime accused, including the alleged mastermind Ravi Emandi. While two were arrested in September, Emandi was arrested two days ago.
Police Commissioner Sajjanar told reporters that the ED and CBI would be informed about the piracy network in view of its international links. Observing that the accused had obtained data of 50 lakh subscribers, he said the data can be misused for cyber crimes and other crimes.
Referring to the main accused Ravi challenging the police in the past to arrest him, Sajjanar said Telangana police would always make efforts to apprehend those involved in crimes.
Police said Emandi used his expertise in web hosting and development to create a piracy website in 2019, marking the beginning of his piracy and betting-promotion network.
The platform quickly became one of the most popular piracy websites due to its superior video quality, attracting nearly five million users a month.
As authorities repeatedly blocked the main domains, the accused created multiple new domain extensions and shifted hosting to foreign servers to evade Indian jurisdiction.
He reportedly deployed physical servers in countries including the Netherlands and Switzerland to ensure uninterrupted streaming of pirated content, making law enforcement tracking extremely difficult.
The accused allegedly maintained backup copies of movies on external hard drives to quickly relaunch new domains whenever existing ones were blocked.
Police said they recovered around 21,000 films from his possession, ranging from Hollywood classics like ‘The Godfather’ (1972) to new Telugu releases.
For revenue generation, Emandi allegedly collaborated with online gaming and betting operators and diverted traffic from his site to these platforms.
To avoid Indian law, he also renounced his Indian citizenship and obtained citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean, police said.
After analysing technical data from domain service providers, internet service providers, and passport authorities, police traced and arrested him from an apartment in Hyderabad, the release added.