Mumbai: Mumbai Police, in its chargesheet, has said that Neeraj Bishnoi, the alleged creator of Bulli Bai app, had asked a co-accused to send pictures of 100 famous non-BJP Muslim women.
The cyber cell of the city police filed a 2,000-page chargesheet in the suburban Bandra magistrate’s court here last week. Its copy was made available on Wednesday.
The police have so far arrested six people in this case.
Citing a statement given by one of the arrested accused, Neeraj Singh, the police claimed that in June 2020 iGiyu (Bishnoi’s user id) told Singh that he was planning to do something big on his social media group. is making.
Bishnoi then asked people in the group to send pictures of “100 famous non-BJP Muslim women in India”, following which he was sent links and screenshots of several women’s Twitter handles.
According to the chargesheet, Bishnoi told them that after a few days, the application or app would be ready and no one would be able to copy or crack it.
Two or three days later, Singh came to know from social media that a case had been registered against the makers of the app. Thereafter, he asked all the members of the group to delete their Twitter account and posts on the group and to stay away from social media for a few days, the chargesheet said.
The police have also alleged that the accused were asked to publicize on social media about the so-called auction.
The chargesheet states that the accused deliberately used words related to Sikhism to make it appear as if the app targeting Muslim women was created by people of the Sikh community.
This was done to create a rift between the two communities and the timely arrest of the accused was done to prevent law and order issues, it said.
The chargesheet states that the accused allegedly tracked the accounts of Muslim women active on social media, downloaded their photographs without their consent and conspired to sell them online for “immoral and obscene purposes”.
All the accused were tech-savvy and each of them had more than one Twitter, Instagram and Gmail account.
Police alleged that Bishnoi had first shared the link of Bulli Bai app on his Twitter group and the group members were fully aware that it would be used to target Muslim women.
The chargesheet states that the accused Shweta Singh, Mayank Rawat, Bishnoi and Neeraj Singh knew each other and were in contact with each other during the time of committing the crime.
The chargesheet states that Shweta Singh, who was a member of several Twitter and Instagram groups, was active on social media and frequently posted objectionable content.
Mumbai Police has registered an FIR against unidentified persons following complaints of uploading fake pictures of hundreds of Muslim women for ‘auction’ on Bulli Bai app hosted on open source software platform GitHub.
While there was no actual auction or sale, the app was intended to humiliate and intimidate the targeted women, many of whom are active social media users.