The city civil and sessions court on Tuesday granted bail to three accused in the Bulli Bai App case, which was curated to ‘auction’ Muslim women by doctoring their photographs.
Neeraj Singh, 28, an MBA graduate was arrested from Odisha by the Mumbai Police cyber cell on January 20, 2022. Another accused, Neeraj Bishnoi, alleged to be the main conspirator in the case, was arrested by the Delhi police from Assam and was brought to Mumbai on Thursday. The third, Aumkareshwar Thakur, was arrested by Delhi Police and is alleged to be an accused in the Sulli Deals case, a similar app that posted pictures of Muslim women.
The chargesheet filed by the Mumbai Police in March stated that Mr. Bishnoi was the first to share the link of Bulli Bai app on his Twitter group and members of the group were fully aware that it would be used to target Muslim women. He had asked a co-accused to send photographs of 100 “famous non-BJP Muslim women” in order to put them up for auction.
On January 1, 2022, the Cyber police station of the West Region had registered an FIR against relevant Twitter handles and the developer of ‘Bulli Bai’ for offenses under Sections 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion etc), 153B (imputations prejudicial to national-integration), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 354D (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 500 (criminal defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of Information Technology Act.
