The Mumbai Police said on Thursday, 27 January, that Niraj Bishnoi, the creator of the Bulli Bai app was inspired by the Delhi Police's failure in arresting Aumkareshwar Thakur, who had created a similar app by the name of Sulli Deals back in July 2021, The Indian Express reported.
Photos of over a hundred Muslim women were uploaded for mock online auctions on the Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals apps with the accompanying text: "Deal of the day".
As Bishnoi's custody ended on Thursday, a court in Mumbai sent him to police custody till 31 January.
The police stated that all the accused arrested so far by the Mumbai Cyber Police had discussed the Delhi Police's failure on the Trad Mahasabha group on Twitter, which emboldened Bishnoi to repeat the crime by taking the source code from Thakur on the same group, The Indian Express report said.
Twenty-one-year-old Vishal Kumar Jha, 18-year-old Shweta Singh, Mayank Rawat, Neeraj Singh, Niraj Bishnoi, and Aumkareshwar Thakur were members of the Trad Mahasabha and other hateful Twitter groups.
The Mumbai court on Thursday also sent accused Neeraj Singh and Aumkareshwar Thakur to 14 days of judicial custody.
The police said that the members of the Twitter group were taught how to report an account from a rival group and how to mask one's identity by using VPN. The members opposed the followers of the group, Indian Muslim Twitter (IMT).
Reportedly, Thakur had posted the source code of the Sulli Deals app on the group, following which instructions were given on the group to track Muslim women journalists who are active on social media and regularly write on issues that apparently oppose the Hindutva ideology.
The police added that in one of the chats, the group members also discussed that the Delhi Police, despite registering a First Information Report (FIR), was unable to trace them as they were "efficient enough" at hiding their identities, The Indian Express reported.
This inspired Bishnoi to use the source code taken from the group to create the Bulli Bai app. He then told the group members that he had collected 50 photos of Muslim women, and asked them to collect 50 photos
While Trad Mahasabha members asked Bishnoi to wait, he managed to upload data of 102 Muslim women on the app. Later, he asked his three of the accused - Jha, Singh and Rawat – to change the names of their Twitter handles to Sikh names to portray that people from the community were behind the app, the police said.
(With inputs from The Indian Express.)
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