Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
With the arrest of a second-year engineering student from Jorhat in Assam, now there are four alleged culprits in connection with the Bulli Bai app case which had listed hundreds of Muslim women for ‘auction’.
All four are students and in their early 20s.
Here is what we know about those behind the Bulli Bai app
1. Niraj Bishnoi, arrested on Thursday, is apparently the main conspirator in the case. Bishnoi, a resident of Jorhat who studies in Bhopal, is also the creator of the “Bulli Bai” app on the platform GitHub as well as the main Twitter account holder of “Bulli Bai”. Bishnoi is a second-year B.Tech student from the Vellore Institute of Technology in the Madhya Pradesh capital.
2. The Mumbai Police made the earlier arrests. Shweta Singh, a 19-year-old woman, arrested from Uttarakhand, was said to be another mastermind of the case. Reports said she was planning to pursue an engineering course after her class 12. She had lost her father to Covid recently.
3. A 21-year-old engineering student, Vishal Kumar Jha, was arrested from Bengaluru was arrested earlier. Vishal Kumar’s lawyer said his client has been falsely implicated in the case.
Bulli Bai row: ‘I am the real mastermind’, claims Twitter user; asks police to stop targeting ‘innocent’ people
4. Mayank Rawal (21), another conspirator, was arrested from Uttarakhand. He is a student of Delhi University, studying Chemistry honours from Zakir Hussain College. He is the son of Army Subedar Pradeep Rawat. He admitted to the police that he had received a link on Twitter on December 31 and was asked to join. He said he took some screenshots and shared them on his timeline.
What is the Nepal connection of Bulli Bai?
Police said Shweta Singh was acting on the instructions of some Twitter user ‘Giyou’ who is based in Nepal. “You have arrested the wrong person, Mumbai police. I am the creator of #BulliBaiApp. Got nothing to do with the two innocents whom u arrested, release them asap,” the user, who goes by the handle @giyu44, said in a tweet.
What is the Sikh connection of Bulli Bai?
The accused shared photos from the Bulli Bai app on Twitter by using handles like @bullibai_, @sage0x11, @jatkhalsa7, @wannabesigmaf, @jatkhalsa and @Sikh_khalsa11. Police said Sikh names were used on the online platform deliberately to mislead people about their identity. “As per the status of the handle (linked to the app), it says Bulli Bai is a community-driven open source app by Khalsa Sikh Force. So why this (alias) is there, that is part of our investigation,” Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale said.
