‘If you have committed crime, face it”: Supreme Court to Sulli Deals app accused

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to entertain a plea seeking urgent listing of petitions seeking clubbing of various FIRs across the country in connection with offences related to the Sulli Deals app in which scores of Muslim women were put on “sale” by right-wing Hindus.

A plea before a bench, headed by Chief Justice N.V. Ramana, submitted that multiple FIRs have been filed against accused and sought urgent listing of the plea, PTI reported.

At this, the Chief Justice said: “If you have committed a crime. You’ll have to face it. Covered or uncovered will be decided at the date of hearing.”

The petitioner, Aumkareshwar Thakur, is accused in 3 FIRs registered in New Delhi, Noida, and Mumbai.

Police have claimed that Thakur joined a group on Twitter by the name of Tradmahasabha in January 2020 using the handle @gangescion and the members had discussed about trolling and targeting Muslim women. Thakur had developed the Islamophobic application on Github.

Delhi Police in January arrested the Madhya Pradesh resident Aumkareshwar Thakur who is the alleged creator of the application ‘Sulli Deals‘ – a GitHub app targeted hundreds of Muslim women.

This was the first arrest made in the “Sulli Deals” app case. The app had created a major uproar last year for targeting hundreds of Muslim women.

Nearly six months after the ‘Sulli Deals‘ where photographs of more than 80 Muslim women put up for sale by right-wing Hindus in July 2021, asserting anti-Muslim hatred and selective sexism, photos of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded by an unidentified group on an App using GitHub – by the name of ‘Bulli Bai’ – on 1 January 2022.

“Bulli Bai” and “Sulli” are the abusive and derogatory ways of referring to Muslim women.

The accused, Aumkareshwar Thakur, was apprehended by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) of Delhi Police in Madhya Pradesh’s Indore.

The 25 year old was arrested after he admitted during preliminary interrogation that he was member of the Trad-Group on Twitter and the idea was shared to defame and dehumanize Muslim women.

Police identified and arrested Thakur on the basis of the inputs they received during the questioning of ‘Bulli Bai’ app creator Niraj Bishnoi. Other than Bishnoi, four other upper-caste Hindus have also been arrested in the Bulli Bai app case.