Main conspirator & creator of the ‘Bulli Bai’ app arrested by Delhi Police from Assam

Jan. 6: Neeraj Bishnoi, the main conspirator in the Bulli Bai case in which Muslim women were put up on an online ‘auction’ has been arrested by Delhi Police from Assam. This is the fourth arrest in the case that had sparked an uproar after prominent Muslim women journalists, lawyers and activists known to be vocal on social and political issues were targeted in the disgusting ‘auction’. As part of the ‘auction’, doctored photographs of the targets, who spanned age groups, were put up on social media networks.

21-year-old Bishnoi is a second-year engineering student at a Bhopal-based institute. He was arrested from his hometown in Assam’s Jorhat and will be brought to Delhi this afternoon. The controversy surfaced on January 1 as several Muslim women found themselves listed for ‘auction’.

Bulli Bai is an app developed by a group of Indians from across the country to trick people and make financial gains. The idea behind the app is to put Indian women (mostly Muslims) up for auction and earn money in return. Criminals pick photos of popular women, celebs, influencers, journalists, and so on, from the internet and use them for their financial gains.

These online scammers steal photos of these women from their social media account and list them on the platform. Soon after several posts from the Bulli Bai app were circulated on Twitter, the government directed the social media platform to remove such derogatory posts with immediate effect.

The egregious app appeared to be a clone of ‘Sulli Deals’, which had triggered a row last year by offering users a ‘sulli’ – an insulting term used by right-wing trolls for Muslim women. That was hosted by the same platform, GitHub.