Sunday, January 2: After 6 months of the derogatory ‘Sulli deals’ app, where pictures of Muslim women were put up without their knowledge or consent for auctioning, another similar app named ‘Bulli bai’ emerged on Saturday, which has been created on GitHub platform by an unknown group.
This matter came to light after a women journalist Ismat Ara, who has been subjected to the harassment, filed a complaint to Cyber Cell of Delhi Police on Saturday for immediate registration of FIR demanding consequent action against people behind the auctioning of Muslim women on social media & the internet.
Afterwards, the Delhi Cyber Police registered the FIR on the basis of the Complaint filed by her.
Ismat Ara on Sunday tweeted, “An FIR has been registered by Cyber Police (South East Delhi) on the basis of my complaint with IPC sections 153A (Promoting enmity on grounds of religion etc), 153B (Imputations prejudicial to national-integration), 354A & 509 for sexual harassment.”
Moreover Mumbai police has also registered a case on Sunday.
Prior to that, on Saturday Morning, Ara shared a screenshot of the website bulli.github.io on Twitter in which a doctored picture of her was being seen.
In her FIR she stated that she was shocked to find that website bulli.github.io had posted a doctored photograph of her “in an improper, unacceptable and clearly lewd context”. “I am often the target of online trolls and this seems to be the next step in such harassment,” she said.
In the complaint to the police she wrote, “The term ‘Bulli bai’ itself seems disrespectful and the content of this website/portal bulli.github.io is clearly aimed at insulting Muslim Women as the derogatory term ‘Bulli’ is used exclusively for Muslim women & the entire website seems to have designed with the intent of embarrassing and insulting Muslim Women.”
The Delhi police earlier had tweeted that they have taken cognizance of the matter. Concerned officials have been directed to take appropriate action
Since no serious action was taken in the similar ‘Sulli deals’ app case, Shiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi in a tweet urged IT minister to take stern action against the culprits.
“I have repeatedly asked Hon. IT Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw ji to take stern action against such rampant misogyny and communal targeting of women through #sullideals like platforms. A shame that it continues to be ignored,” she tweeted.
Replying to her, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in a tweet said, “GitHub confirmed blocking the user this morning itself. CERT and Police authorities are coordinating further action.”
Apart from this, Alt News Co-founder Mohammed Zubair, who has gathered proofs and screenshots of the Twitter handle that tweeted the ‘deals’ also reached out to the Mumbai police asking for a complaint to be filed.
“Got a call from DCP cyber cell Mumbai, Have shared all the details I had to Mumbai DCP. Hope those behind this are caught ASAP. It’s possible that their arrest can also lead to people who created #sullideals last year,” tweeted a hopeful Zubair.
As per a tweet by him, they had pics of atleast 100 influential Indian Muslim woman on the GitHub app.
