Niraj Bishnoi was arrested from his residence in Assam’s Jorhat on Thursday. (File) The 21-year-old engineering student arrested for allegedly creating a website using GitHub, where Muslim women were put up for “auction”, has in the past defaced school websites, and would often use the Gurmukhi script on social media to “mask” his identity and try and create a “rift” between communities, police claim.
Niraj Bishnoi was arrested from his residence in Assam’s Jorhat on Thursday. Police say he learnt coding when he was 15, and claims to have defaced websites of Army Public School and Delhi Public School. Police say they are verifying his claims.
DCP (Cyber Cell) KPS Malhotra said, “We analysed his laptop and other gadgets and found that he used the Gurmukhi script on social media as well as while coding. He claims he did this because he found the script to be more impactful than Devanagari.”
Police are also probing if he has connections with another website created on GitHub six months ago, where Muslim women were similarly “auctioned”.
The DCP said, “He told us he was in touch with the creator of the Twitter handle, @sullideals. We verified his claim and found that he was interacting with the account in May. He posted a photo of a woman (Congress leader) for ‘auction’ and tagged @sullideals in the post.”
Delhi Police officers also believe Bishnoi was in touch with some of the other accused, arrested by the Mumbai Police, “virtually”. “He communicated with them on Twitter group chats but didn’t have their contact details,” said an officer. One of the accused he was in touch with, police said, is 18-year-old Shweta Singh, who was arrested from Uttarakhand.
Delhi Police have seven-day custody of Bishnoi and have been questioning him for hours every day. Investigating officers claim he isn’t cooperating and, at one point, threatened to harm himself. “His medical examination has been conducted and he is stable and unharmed,” said DCP Malhotra.
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