India: Police arrest 3 suspects in Muslim women for “auction” app case
Jan 5, 2022: Police in India say they have arrested three suspects in an investigation into an online app that shared photos of more than 100 Muslim women for “auction” in yet another hate crime against the minority community.
In recent days, many Indian Muslim women have said on social media that their images have been used without consent to create an open source app on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned open software development platform.
The app was called “Bulli Bai”, an insulting term used to describe Muslim women.
Mumbai Police’s Cyber Crime Division arrested 21-year-old Mayank Rawal from the northern state of Uttarakhand on Wednesday morning, according to the Press Trust of India News Agency. Rawal is the third person to be arrested in the case, while 21-year-old engineering student Vishal Kumar was arrested on Monday at the South Tech Hub in Bangalore.
The next day, Swetha Singh, a 19-year-old woman, who is suspected to be the main accused in the case, was arrested from Uttarakhand. In a police complaint filed on Sunday, New Delhi-based journalist Ismat Ara, who was targeted through an app for an online “auction”, said it was an attempt to harass Muslim women.
“GitHub is violent, threatening and aims to create fear and embarrassment in my mind as well as in the minds of women in general, and in the minds of the Muslim community whose women are being targeted in this hateful way.” Complainant Ismat Ara posted on social media.
Last Saturday, India’s Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vishnava said that GitHub had confirmed the blocking of a user who created the “Bulli Buy” app which had “sold” 80 muslim women. A similar app called “Sulli Deals” that had targeted Indian Muslim women came out after “bulli buy”
No arrests have been made in the “Sulli Deals” case.
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