Thursday, March 28, 2024

‘Bulli Bai’ case: Mumbai police now detain Uttarakhand woman, say she handled app

Apart from the 21-year old Bengaluru man Vishal Kumar Jha detained on Monday, the Mumbai police have also detained a woman from Uttarakhand on Tuesday in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai‘ case – a GitHub app targeting hundreds of Muslim women.

“The 21-year-old man arrested by Mumbai Police Cyber Cell has been identified as Vishal Kumar. Main accused in the case is a woman detained from Uttarakhand. Both of the accused know each other,” read Mumbai Police statement.

According to Mumbai Police, the main accused woman was handling three accounts related to ‘Bulli Bai’ app.

“Co-accused Vishal Kumar opened an account by the name Khalsa supremacist. On Dec 31, he changed the names of other accounts to resemble Sikh names. Fake Khalsa account holders were shown,” claimed police.

Police also informed media that the Mumbai Police Cyber Cell today arrested the 21-year-old engineering student, who was detained from Bengaluru yesterday, following questioning in the case.

Nearly six months after the ‘Sulli Deals‘ where photographs of more than 80 Muslim women put up for sale by right-wing Hindus, 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 Saturday.

Last time, no police action has been taken against perpetrators in the case, despite two FIRs filed – one in Delhi and another in Uttar Pradesh and more than a dozen complaints were written to several police stations in the country.

“I woke up in the morning with the thought of starting my day with a new report, but when I opened my Twitter notifications, I saw my name being retweeted; I was one of the women tagged as ‘Bulli Bai, deal of the day’,” journalist Arshi Qureshi told Maktoob.

She went on to say: “My hands went numb for few minutes. I couldn’t process it at all. I felt humiliated, scared. All I could think was– is this country for women? They claim to worship women, respect them, and vocal Muslim women are being targeted this way? Are they so insecure because they are threatened by us?”

Arshi further said that those bigots were able to target the Muslim women again because no action was taken against them the first time.

“This deliberate sexualisation has been done to satisfy their own inferiority complex,” Arshi says.

“It is very sad that as a Muslim woman you have to start your new year with this sense of fear & disgust. Of course it goes without saying that I am not the only one being targeted in this new version of #sullideals. Screenshot sent by a friend this morning,” tweeted The Wire journalist Ismat Ara, who is one of the women named in the app.

Responding to Ismat’s tweet, Delhi Police said that the matter has been taken cognizance of. “Concerned officials have been directed to take appropriate action,” read tweet by Delhi Police.

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