The police in Indian capital, New Delhi, have filed detailed chargesheets in the “Bulli Bai” and “Sulli Deals” cases in which Muslim women were targeted and defamed.
The cases were being probed by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell.
The derogatory Sulli Deals mobile app had surfaced in July 2021, where Muslim women along with their photos were put up “for auction” on the app.
Six months later, another similar incident of harassing and targeting women from the community came to light after a Delhi-based woman journalist lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police stating that she was being targeted by some unidentified group of people on a mobile application. This time, the app was named as Bulli Bai, yet again created on US-based GitHub platform.
The prime accused in the cases, identified as Niraj Bishnoi, who created the Bulli Bai app and Aumkareshwar Thakur, creator of the Sulli Deals app, were arrested by the Delhi Police on January 6 and January 8, respectively.
The chargesheet, which was filed in a local court in Delhi, contained 2,000 pages in the Bulli Bai case while in Sulli Deals case chargesheet was of 700 pages.
In the Sulli Deals case, the Cyber Crime Unit of the Delhi Police had registered an FIR under section 354-A (Sexual harassment and punishment for sexual harassment) of the Indian Penal Code on July 8.
However, the chargesheet has been filed under sections 153A (Promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc., and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 153B (Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration) and 354A(3) (Sexual harassment and punishment for sexual harassment) of the IPC, as well as the sections 66 and 67 of the IT Act.
Bulli Bai had a number of pictures of women, including journalists, social workers, students and famous personalities, accompanied by derogatory content.—Agencies
