A 21-year-old engineering student was caught in Bengaluru in a raid by a Mumbai Police team in connection with the “Bulli Bai” controversy. Later the Mumbai Cyber Crime Cell arrested the accused.
Sources said the student was brought to Mumbai and questioned for 13 hours. He said that another person, a woman from Uttarakhand, has also been detained by the police.
The controversy, which arose on January 1, saw the Bulli Bai app on the hosting platform Github, listing and posting photos of hundreds of Muslim women for “auction”, without permission and tampering. This is the second time this has happened in less than a year. The app appears to be a clone of Sully Deals which started a similar line last year.
Both names are derogatory terms for Muslim women. The arrested student was one of Bulli Bai’s followers who took the police to her.
Github had replaced Sulli Deals and this time too an objectionable app was made on the platform. After the controversy, Github removed the user from its hosting platform.
But by then Bulli Bai had created a nationwide controversy. The app was also being promoted by a Twitter handle named @bullibai, in which the picture displayed was of a Khalistani supporter.
This Twitter handle was supporting Bulli Bai app saying that women can be booked from the app. This handle was also promoting Khalistani content at the same time.
Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi wrote a letter to Mumbai Police following which a case was registered. Delhi Police had also registered a case in this regard.
When the Sully Deal controversy broke out, two FIRs were registered against unknown persons, but the culprits behind it were not traced nor arrested.
Meanwhile, the Delhi Police has sought details from the GitHub platform about the developer of the ‘Bully Bai’ mobile application and asked Twitter to block and remove related “offensive content” on its platform. The police have also sought information from Twitter about the account handler who first tweeted about the app.
Leaders across the political spectrum condemned the cyber harassment of women belonging to the minority community and called for strict action against the culprits.
Describing the matter as “serious”, the Delhi Minorities Commission issued a notice to city police chief Rakesh Asthana seeking an action taken report on January 10. It said there is a need to protect the interests of Muslim women by apprehending the culprits. The Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) has also asked the police officials to appear later this week.