Twenty-year-old Niraj Bishnoi represents a class of online trolls who are not paid but influenced; they could be the boy or girl next door, a police officer probing the offensive Bulli Bai app case said. Bishnoi belongs to a lower middle class family; his father is a staunch Congress supporter while his grandfather was a supporter of a Communist leader, the family said.
Natives of Nagaur in Rajasthan, the family now based in Assam, is facing the heat after Niraj’s arrest. His sister who’s pursuing law and did not wish to be named, claimed that her brother hadn’t created the application against Muslim women but against those posting against the Ram Mandir.
“My brother had created the application but it wasn’t anti-Muslim. The application was self-generating and was coded in a way that names and pictures of those posting against Ram Mandir would pop-up as ‘Bulli Bai of the day’,” she told The Hindu, adding that there was “no auctioning” of women like it was in Sulli deals application.
“The word ‘deal’ wasn’t used in this app. It featured women. And I understand that it would enrage any woman whose photo would feature there,” she said.
A senior police officer, however, denied the sister’s theory of coding, and said Niraj had coded the application in a way that it would throw up names of one of the 102 Muslim women whose names had been fed by him into the app.
The family said that as the word spread back in the villages in Rajasthan and Assam, people started believing that Niraj was trafficking in women.
“Someone told my mother that Niraj was buying women in ₹2 lakh each and selling them for ₹4 lakh. Now what should I tell her? She fell sick and was hospitalised,” claimed Niraj’s father Dasrath Bishnoi.
Four of Mr. Dasrath’s brothers are still based in Rajasthan including two who are Army officers. Mr. Dasrath was brought to Assam by his maternal uncle in 1986 when he was in his early teens and after studying for two years, he started working with his uncle. Ten years later, in 1996, he opened his own grocery store in Jorhat.
Talking about his own political views and his father’s which he is sure have not influenced his son, Mr Dasrath said that his father, who used to reside in Rajasthan with his brothers and passed away in 2012, used to support a communist leader.
“I have always been a supporter of the Indian National Congress,” he said. “My son is an introvert and is very sensitive I feel. The politicians and TV news show anchors should speak responsibly. They don’t know who might get influenced by their words,” the father said.
Niraj was arrested by Delhi Police Special Cell for creating Bulli Bai application – a crime he has admitted to committing.