The website hosted by US-based open-source platform GitHub had published photos of more than a hundred Muslim women with lewd and vulgar remarks. (Representational image) The Delhi Police on Thursday arrested a 21-year-old engineering student from Assam for allegedly creating a website using GitHub, which published photographs of Muslim women alongside objectionable comments.
This comes days after a Delhi-based journalist lodged a complaint with the Delhi Police over her photo being misused on the website. At least 100 Muslim women were targeted in a similar fashion on the website, which was hosted on the US-based software development platform GitHub.
KPS Malhotra, DCP (Cyber Cell), said, “We have arrested the main conspirator and creator of the website. He was also running the main Twitter account of the website. Our team caught him from Assam. The team will reach Delhi around 3.30 pm.”
The student has been identified as Niraj Bishnoi, a resident of Jorhat. Police said he is a second-year B.Tech student from Vellore Institute of Technology, Bhopal.
Sources said they tracked Bishnoi’s IP address as part of the investigation. “We have found that the other three persons (arrested by Mumbai Police) were just following Bishnoi’s instructions. He was guiding them to create accounts on Twitter,” said a police source.
According to Assam Police, their Delhi counterparts had contacted them to help carry out the “secret operation”. “We helped them in the operation and that is how the boy was located and apprehended thereafter,” a senior Assam Police official told The Indian Express.
The official said Bishnoi lives in the Digambar Chowk area of Jorhat, one of Upper Assam’s biggest towns. “His father is a businessman and the family lives in Jorhat. While there is information that he is a student of Vellore Institute of Technology in Bhopal, his father said he was studying in Delhi. So, there is a discrepancy and we will know the full details soon,” said the official.
He added Bishnoi was in Delhi but had returned to Jorhat a few days back, just after the news of the controversial website broke.
Delhi Police Cyber Cell had earlier written to GitHub and Twitter to provide details on an urgent basis of creators of the website as well as persons who shared the screenshots on Twitter. Twitter, however, asked them to come via “proper channels”.
Officials said they then sent a formal request through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) seeking details from the apps for the investigation.
Based on the complaint of the journalist, a case under IPC sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the ground of religion and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 153B (Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 354A (sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) was registered on January 1.
Delhi Police said they have already received approval from the Ministry of Home Affairs to send a request to GitHub through MLAT in connection with an earlier case from six months ago, when a similar website was hosted on GitHub, also targeting Muslim women.
- The Indian Express website has been rated GREEN for its credibility and trustworthiness by Newsguard, a global service that rates news sources for their journalistic standards.
