Media bodies across India have strongly condemned the ‘Bulli Bai’ app that ‘auctioned’ prominent In-dian Muslim women – including journalists – saying it is a direct consequence of the Indian police’s fail-ure to act against previous ‘apps’ which made simi-lar attempts. In a strongly-worded statement, the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) said the app, which was hosted on GitHub, amounts to “online sexual violence”, saying the ‘auction’ clearly pro-motes “the crimes of trafficking and sexual slavery, which GitHub purports to stand against”.
“This is not the first time that such bigoted mi-sogynists have ‘auctioned’ Muslim women. It is regrettable and unacceptable that the Indian state and its agencies have taken no action against them despite repeated violations. Technology has been used as a weapon to humiliate, intimidate and terror-ise Muslim women in the country multiple times, and ‘Digital India’ appears to have no concrete re-sponse aimed at bringing the perpetrators to book.—INP
