Bulli Bai App Case: Mumbai police arrest one more student in Uttarakhand

Mumbai: Mumbai cyber police have arrested one more student from Uttarakhand in connection with the 'Bully Bai' app case, reports PTI quoting police officials. The police informed that the arrested is identified as Mayank Rawal, a 21-year-old student and have also detected links to Nepal in the case.

Rawal, who is the third accused who is arrested in the case, was nabbed from the northern state in the early hours of Wednesday, says the report.

The cyber cell of Mumbai police had earlier arrested Shweta Singh (19), alleged to be the main culprit, from Uttarakhand, and engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha (21) from Bengaluru in connection with the case.

According to Police, Shweta was in touch with a handle, which is being operated from Nepal. On his instructions, she made a Twitter handle with the name of @jattkhalsa07 and started uploading photos of women who are activists, students from a minority community. Her friend Giyou whom she met on social media was asking her to do all this. He is based in Nepal.

The Mumbai police had registered a First Information Report (FIR) against unidentified persons following complaints that doctored photographs of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded for 'auction' on the app called `Bulli Bai', hosted on the open-source software platform GitHub.

While there was no actual `auction' or `sale', the purpose of the app seemed to be to humiliate and intimidate the targeted women, many of whom are active social media users.

The Mumbai cyber police station has also registered a case against the app's unidentified developers and Twitter handles, which promoted it.

On Tuesday, the Court of Metropolitan Magistrate in Mumbai's Bandra remanded Vishal Kumar Jha who was arrested in the Bulli Bai App case, in Mumbai cyber police's custody while an Uttarkhand court granted city police four-day transit remand of Shweta Singh, who is alleged to be the main culprit in the case.

While the court in Mumbai remanded Jha in police custody till January 10, his co-accused Shweta Singh will be brought to Mumbai and will be produced before the Mumbai court on Wednesday reports PTI quoting a senior police official.

The Bulli Bai app (now blocked by GitHub) is the second case of this kind of sexual harassment and cyber-bullying targeting women from the minority community. A similar app and website called `Sulli Deals' had come to light last year.

Amid the outrage, the Delhi Police has sought details from the GitHub platform about the developers of the 'Bulli Bai' mobile application and also asked Twitter to block and remove related "offensive contents". The police also sought from Twitter information about the account handler who first tweeted about the app.

Leaders from across the political spectrum condemned this cyber-harassment and called for strict action against the culprits.

Terming the matter as "serious", the Delhi Minorities Commission has issued a notice to Delhi police chief Rakesh Asthana seeking an action-taken report by January 10.