2 accused held for auctioning Muslim women on ‘Bulli Bai’ app

The New Year began on a controversial note when photographs of more than 100 Muslim women, including prominent actor Shabana Azami, wife of a sitting judge of Delhi High Court, multiple journalists, activists and politicians, were uploaded for auction on an app. The discovery has prompted outrage, with the Indian government promising it will take action.
Vishal Kumar, the 21-year-old engineering student was arrested by the Mumbai cyber police in connection with its probe into two apps where images of Muslim women were posted in an attempt to “auction” them, police said. The Mumbai police have also detained a woman in Uttarakhand in connection with the case. Police officers, however, refused to divulge details about the woman.Kumar was running one of the Twitter handles used to upload the content from the app, an officer from the Mumbai cyber crime cell said.
The Delhi and Mumbai Police had registered separate cases. In Delhi, a journalist lodged a complaint with the cyber cell, alleging her pictures had been uploaded on the app. She took to Twitter informing that her complaint had been registered and a case under Sections 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion etc), 153B (imputations prejudicial to national integration), 354A & 509 (sexual harassment) had been filed. An official said Mumbai Cyber police has also registered an FIR against developers of 'Bulli Bai' app and Twitter handles that promoted this application.
Earlier, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had tweeted that GitHub, the coding platform on which the said app was hosted, had blocked the user, and Cert-In and police were “co-coordinating further action”.Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said, the hosting platform has confirmed blocking the operator of the app called “Bulli Bai”.
Politicians, netizens and women's rights groups demanded strict action against the makers of the app and many blamed it on right-wing elements. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi called upon people to raise their voice against "'insult of women" and communal hatred.
It has happened for the second time in less than a year. The app appeared to be a clone of Sulli Deals which triggered a similar row last year. “Sulli” and “Bulli” are slang words used derogatorily for Muslim women. GitHub was the host for both apps. The app encouraged people to participate in the “auction”.
Last year, the Union Government had cited offending content against women as one of the reasons for framing the new digital rules that called for intermediaries for identifying the user hosting the offensive content within 24 hours. Two FIRs were filed by the Delhi and UT Police in the “Sulli Deals” incident last year.