Mumbai: In the Bulli Bai App case, Mumbai police has stated a woman from Uttarakhand is the main accused in the case. After arresting 21 year old Vishal Jha from Bengaluru the woman from Uttarakhand was arrested. For further investigation and interrogation both the accused have been brought to Mumbai on January 4. The police stated that both the accused know each other.
The main accused woman, was handling three accounts on the app. The co-accused Vishal Jha, had tried to mislead users by assuming non-Hindu identities, the police said. He had opened an account by the name, “Khalsa Supremist”.
“On 31 December he changed the names of other accounts to mirror Sikh names,” the officer said. Police have said the app has no connection to Sikhs but the accused allegedly made it look as if it was linked to Khalistani groups.
The Cybercrime wing on January 3 had announced detention of the engineering student. However, his arrest was recorded at noon on Tuesday, 4 January. As per sources, contrary to what was circulated on social media, the accused from Bengaluru is not a Muslim. His name is Vishal Jha.
The Mumbai cyber police station had also registered a case against the app developers and Twitter handles that promoted the app.
Both the co-accused were social media friends, a Mumbai police officer said. “They were friends on Facebook and Instagram. The links are now established,” the officer said.
Hundreds of Muslim women were listed for ‘auction’ on the ‘Bulli Bai’ app with photographs sourced without permission and doctored. 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.
Amid outrage over Muslim women being targeted through the dodgy app, the Delhi Police had 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.
Accused Vishal Jha was produced today before Bandra Court. On being sent to custody till January 10, his lawyer has said, “My client has been sent to police custody till January 10. My client is falsely implicated in this case. Police had filed an application to obtain a search warrant: Advocate D. Prajapati, lawyer of ‘Bulli Bai’ app case accused Vishal Kumar.”
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