Muslim women harassment apps- the crime, laws and a larger conspiracy behind bullying and harassment
New Delhi, January 6
The ‘Muslim women auction’ platforms has outraged many over the audacity of the functioning of these apps and the Internet providing a platform to such bullying. The investigations in the cases however have indicated a much larger plan where the 'auction apps' were being coaxed to be promoted on Twitter through elements in neighbouring Nepal.
While some are calling these apps as ‘just for fun’, which makes it more important for people to know why apps like Sulli Deals and Bully Bai are a crime and penalized under the relevant sections of law.
The offenses like eve teasing, stalking, flashing, online trolling, photo morphing etc are cybercrime and so are crimes like sulli or bulli ‘auctions’.
In the most recent case, a Delhi based Muslim woman journalist filed a complaint with cybercrime when her photo was found on Bully Bai app with obscene comments. Another woman in Mumbai had filed a complaint against Bully Bai app when she faced the same harassment.
The Mumbai Police while probing the Bully Bai case tracked down three youngsters from Uttarakhand and Bengaluru in the Mumbai cases and arrested them by identifying them through Twitter.
The Mumbai Police arrested Shweta Singh (19) who was named the mastermind of the cases in Mumbai alongwith another aide identified as Mayank Rawal (21) both from Uttarakhand. The cyber sleuths then arrested Vishal Kumar Jha from Bengaluru in December and January.
The probe however in bully cases are indicating much larger hand behind this. The Uttarakhand police while probing more on the two youth stated that Shweta and Mayank were both in touch with elements from Nepal.
In a startling revelation, Uttarakhand police stated that Shweta Singh was in touch with a boy from Nepal identified as Gioyu who had coaxed her to change her Twitter account, infinitude07 to ZATTkhalsa7 and promote the Bulli Bai App.
Though the police could track the accused through the Twitter handles however the creators of the app and those contacting these accused to popularize this harassment are yet to be caught hold on. The Uttarakahand police's lead in the accused arrested by Mumbai Police can open a can of worms for this dark act against Muslim women.
The said boy from Nepal also in a series of tweets claimed to accept the blame and called him the 'mastermind' of Bully Bai app.
You have arrested the wrong person, slumbai 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.
“When this fiasco started I wasn’t even aware of what it might entail, so I use my friends accounts. Both Vishal and that Swati girl, I use their accounts.. They didn’t even know what I was going to do. Now they got arrested coz of me... Feel free to abuse me in comments,” the user further said.
In a subsequent tweet, the user said, "I will personally surrender if someone arranges for my travel by flight."
The Mumbai Police are now trying to trace the owner of the handle @giyu44 to verify his claims. As Twitter handle @giyu44 grabbed attention more handles like @giyu2000 cropped up.
The Delhi Police made their fist arrest in the Bully Bai case on January 6 after tracking down a boy from Assam identified as Neeraj Bishnoi, an engineer. The Delhi Police confirmed that it was indeed Bishnoi who had created the app on Github and was running five Twitter handles and promoted BullyBai apps through those.
He was found to have a historysheet of online abuse whereby he had posted similar content on a woman Congress leader of Rajasthan, posed as a woman journalist to mislead cops and also created another fake name of 'Javed Alam' to propagate about the app. Bishnoi was found to be infamous 'Giyu' who was running the app from Jorhat in Assam.
What is Bully Bai and Sulli Deals?
The complaints of Sulli deals came to the fore in July 2021 when morphed photos of Muslim women were found on an app ‘Sulli deals’ on Github. The
The word ‘Sulli’ is a term used to troll Muslim women. When the noose around Sulli deals was tightened, the accused came up with Bully Bai, another form of Sulli deal.
In this, a group of underage people collected photos of successful and influential women belonging to the Muslim community from sites like LinkedIn and Twitter and created an app called Bulli Bai again on GitHub. Through that app, pictures of the woman were displayed with the title “Din Ki Aapki Bulli Bai' in act to humiliate and harass the women.
While the Bulli Bai app was known to a very small group of online users, what turned it into a full-fledged online harassment when a section of Twitter users starting to tag the handles of women found on the Bulli Bai app. Soon, the app went viral and online trolling and bullying of targeted women started.
In majority of the photos found on these apps, the women are unaware that their photos were stolen from their social media profile and out on such obscene platforms until they started getting tagged on social media and the bullying began at a large scale.
Bulli Bai app is not available on Google Play Store or App Store. It is available on a platform named GitHub.
The crime fuelled on social media with the accused using Twitter to harass women online with their already publish doctored photos on those apps and promoted the apps with Twitter handle. However, after the intervention of the Government of India, now this app and this Twitter handle have been removed.
What is GitHub
GitHub is an open source platform and it gives its users the option to create and share any app. You can sell any kind of app here, personal or professional, as well as sell it. The accused used this platform to create the said apps and harassed over thousands of women so far.
GitHub holds accountability as both the times, the derogatory apps were created abusing technical assistance available on their platform.
In a statement released the company stated, “GitHub has longstanding policies against content and conduct involving harassment, discrimination, and inciting violence. We suspended user accounts following the investigation of reports of such activity, all of which violate our policies. GitHub responds to law enforcement requests that comply with established legal procedures. We informed India police of our policy in this case, and will assist upon receiving valid legal process from them.”
Laws that make Sulli Deals and Bully Bai apps criminal
The IT Act and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 have enough provisions to define bully by app makers as criminals. The act of stealing photos without consent attracts section 354C of IPC while 354D covers stalking.
Hate speech and comments can be combined into defamation and insulting a woman’s modesty through a legally organized Bully Bai campaign. Sections like 499, 503, 506, 507 and 509 of the IPC can be invoked to book the culprits.
Further, under sections 66C, 66E, 67, 67A of the IT Act, creators of Sully and Bulli platforms can be put behind bars, if the government wants to act.
This is an organized crime on the cyber platform to harass, defame and bully women.
However, many law experts are claiming that the harassment blew out of proportion due to inaction of the police on Sulli Deals in Delhi and Noida. If the arrests were made in Sulli cases, the mastermind behind these apps would have got arrested.
The Delhi Police however faced a roadblock with the investigation.
The cybercrime officials of Delhi Police had written to GitHub twice seeking user information however they were turned down stating a reasons that the San Francisco-based company owned by Microsoft does not comply with CrPC (Code of Criminal Procedure) that ensures law and order in India.
It was reported that the GitHub asked Delhi Police to seek information through the legal procedure under MLAT signed between India and USA in 2005. The MLAT is a treaty between two international locations aiming to exchange and gather information to implement legal guidelines.
The officials stated that there is a laid down procedure to procure information from foreign websites or platforms under MLAT and the guidelines have been formed by the MHA.
The added that for sending and executing request for mutual legal assistance, the investigation agency or a State Government/UT will have to draft a proposal with legal recommendation and approval of the Director of the investigation agency/State Government to Internal Security-II division of MHA.
After documents prepared for the legal assistance gets approval from MHA, the request is forwarded to the Central Authority of the Requested Country.
The Delhi Police had also got the permission for MLAT from the government to get user information from Github however the documents have to be sent to MHA for approval which was given only on January 5 after the outrage.
The officials added that they have expedited the process for Sulli Deals case as well as now obtained MLAT for Bully Bai complaints too.
However, the women who have faced the online harassment due to these auction apps and social media have already faced the damage before the outrage poured and citizens demanded action from the government.
The citizens took to social media asking the Centre to bring a uniformed action plan to stop the obscenity and harassment of women on Internet. The National Commission for Women and Delhi Commission for Women have issued notices to Delhi Police. The women ministers took to Twitter condemning the act. The Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnav mentioned that the government is working with Delhi and Mumbai Police on this.
