A 21-year-old engineering student was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ application that targeted Muslim women in a fake online auction, the Mumbai Police said. The man was detained a day ago from Bengaluru.
The arrest came after 10 hours of questioning by Mumbai Police Cyber Cell DCP Rashmi Karandikar. A majoy uproar has erupted over the leaking of photographs of more than 100 prominent Muslim women, including journalists, activists, film stars and artists, on the application last weekend without their permission.
The website had listed the women for “auction” in what appeared to be a clone of the banned app ‘Sulli Deals’ which had triggered a similar row last year.
The women listed on the website also included a 65-year-old mother of a disappeared Indian student as well as Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai.
A case had been registered against unknown culprits under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and Information Technology Act.
The website, hosted on San Francisco-based coding platform GitHub, came to light after an outrage by several victims and other supporters on Twitter.
A company spokesperson of GitHub said it had taken down the user account which had hosted the website on its platform, and that it would cooperate with investigating authorities.
The Delhi Police on Monday asked Twitter to block and remove related “offensive contents” on its platform.
Investigations were launched in at least three states and police filed criminal complaints against developers of the website, based on the complaints of the targeted women.