Mumbai cyber police on Tuesday arrested a 19-year-old woman, believed to be the main accused in the 'Bulli Bai' app case, from Uttarakhand, as the engineering student from Bengaluru was remanded to police custody till January 10.
The Maharashtra Cyber Police and Mumbai Police Cyber Cell had earlier filed an FIR against unidentified persons following complaints that photographs of Muslim women were uploaded for ‘auction’ on the app hosted by GitHub platform.
With two persons now under probe, Maharashtra's minister of state for home and information technology Satej Patel alleged a larger conspiracy.
"There seems to be a much bigger network behind such coordinated crimes and I am confident that the Mumbai Police will soon unearth the entire nexus that is enabling such hate crimes against women in our country," Patil said.
The 21-year-old accused from Bengaluru, identified as Vishal Kumar, an engineering student, was produced in a Magistrate’s Court at Bandra, which remanded him to police custody till January 10. The Mumbai Police has also secured the permission of the Mumbai court to carry out searches at the residence of the Bengaluru youth.
Meanwhile, the woman detained in Uttarakhand is being questioned by a team from Mumbai Crime Branch-CID. She would be brought to Mumbai under transit remand.
According to sources, the accused arrested from Bengaluru and the lady from Uttarakhand know each other. No further details about the two suspects have been shared so far.
The Mumbai cyber police station had also registered a case against the app developers and Twitter handles that promoted the app. Hundreds of Muslim women were listed for ‘auction’ on the ‘Bulli Bai’ app with photographs sourced without permission and doctored. It has happened for the second time in less than a year.
The app appeared to be a clone of Sulli Deals which triggered a similar row last year. Amid outrage over Muslim women being targeted through the dodgy app, the Delhi Police had sought details from the GitHub platform about the developer of the 'Bulli Bai' mobile application and asked Twitter to block and remove related "offensive contents" on its platform.
The police had also sought from Twitter information about the account handler who first tweeted about the app. Leaders from across the political spectrum condemned the cyber harassment of women belonging to the minority community and called for strict action against the guilty. Terming the matter "serious", the Delhi Minorities Commission had issued a notice to city police chief Rakesh Asthana seeking an action-taken report on January 10. It had said the interests of Muslim women need to be safeguarded by nabbing the culprits.
(With PTI inputs)
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