New Delhi
India’s police say they have arrested a 20-year-old man they suspect created an online app that shared pictures of Muslim women for a virtual “auction”, as an investigation into the case of religious hatred widens.
An open-source app on the Microsoft-owned Github platform called “Bulli Bai” – a derogatory term to describe Muslim women – had shared pictures of dozens of women without their consent before it was taken down a week ago.
K P S Malhotra, a police official in the capital, New Delhi, on Thursday said his team had arrested Niraj Bishnoi, a 20-year-old engineering student, from Jorhat in the northeastern state of Assam after a probe that involved the state-run Computer Emergency Response Team.
“He is the person who had created the Bulli Bai app on Github. He had also created the Twitter handle @bullibai_ and other handles,” Malhotra said.
Police in the western city of Mumbai, who are also investigating the app, have separately arrested three people this week, including two 21-year-old engineering students – Vishal Kumar and Mayank Rawal – and Shweta Singh, a 19-year-old woman.
Mumbai police said they were investigating whether the app, which did not involve any actual auctioning of people, was part of a “larger conspiracy”.
