Mumbai Police on Wednesday detained a 21-year-old engineering student from Bengaluru in connection with the complaints that a website had hosted doctored, obscene pictures and objectionable comments “aimed at insulting Muslim women”.
“The 21-year-old is a second-year civil engineering student. He used his Twitter handle to share derogatory content from the Bulli Bai app. We have detained him,” said a senior IPS officer.
Minister of State for Home (Urban) Satej Patil tweeted, “Mumbai Police has got a breakthrough. Though we cannot disclose the details at this moment as it may hamper the ongoing investigation, I would like to assure all the victims that we are proactively chasing the culprits & they will face the law very soon.”
The Cyber Cell department of Mumbai Police have not revealed any other detail about the youth detained, other than his age. They said the student was traced through the IP address of the Twitter accounts that were used to upload the pictures.
Based on a complaint registered by a woman, who is among those from the minority community targeted by the app, Mumbai Police Crime Branch’s cyber police station (west) had lodged an FIR against unknown persons who developed the application and certain Twitter handles that shared the objectionable content.
The FIR was registered for “stalking, defaming, promoting enmity, posting lewd comments among several other sections of the IPC”. The Twitter handles have since been deactivated and the application removed by the host on January 1, a day after it was created.
On Monday, Delhi Police sought details from the GitHub platform about the developer of the mobile application and asked Twitter to block and remove related “offensive contents” on its platform. The police also sought from Twitter information about the account handler who first tweeted about the app.
Hundreds of Muslim women were listed for “auction” on the 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.
In July last year, a case was registered by the Cyber Cell of the Delhi Police after it received a similar complaint about an unidentified group uploading photos of Muslim women on the ‘Sulli Deals’ mobile application. Police officials said an investigation is on in that matter too.
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