BulliBai row:Bengaluru student arrested, Uttarakhand woman detained

Mumbai police on Tuesday arrested  the 21-year-old Bengaluru bases engineering student, who was earlier detained in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ app ‘auctioning’ Muslim women on it. The accused has been identified as Vishal Kumar, who is a civil engineering student. Further, police also detained a woman in Uttarakhand believed to be the mastermind behind the dodgy application. Police said the arrested youth is a co-accused in the matter and was in touch with the woman. Police said that both person, the detained woman and the arrested man, became friends via social media site – Instagram. Mumbai Police on Monday filed a first information report (FIR) against unknown persons based on complaints that doctored photographs of women were uploaded for auction on the ‘Bulli Bai’ application hosted on the GitHub platform. Prior to that on Sunday, West Mumbai Cyber Police station registered a case against the ‘Bulli Bai’ app developers and Twitter handles that promoted the app. The app hosted by the GitHub platform had used their photographs, many of them doctored.

On Monday, Delhi Police also sought details from the GitHub platform about the developer of the ‘Bulli Bai’ mobile application and asked Twitter to block and remove related “offensive contents” on its platform. The police have also sought from Twitter information about the account handler who first tweeted about the app. The development comes after the FIRs were lodged against unknown persons for allegedly uploading a doctored picture of a woman journalist on a website. The journalist had lodged a complaint and shared a copy on Twitter. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said the GitHub user behind the app had been blocked and "further action" was being coordinated. Mumbai police have registered a case, Delhi Police is looking into the matter and the Delhi Commission for Women has issued a notice to police officers.