The Mumbai Police has told a Mumbai court that the three accused persons in the Bulli Bai case, had intentionally used Sikh names on their Twitter and other social media handles to create enmity between Sikhs and Muslims.
According to the police, the three accused, Bangalore student Vishal Jha and Uttarakhand natives Shweta Singh and Mayank Rawat were very active on social media groups and used to post material which could have provoked breach of peace.
“This was done to create enmity and friction between two religious communities which could provoke breach of peace in the society,” the Mumbai police stated in their affidavit opposing the bail plea filed by the three accused.
The Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Police had registered a first information report (FIR) based on complaints by some women, out of the more than 100 prominent Muslim women whose details were uploaded on an app ‘Bulli Bai’ allowing users to participate in an ‘auction’. according to a report by bar&bench.
The police contended in their reply that the accused constantly used Sikh words and put Sikh names on their handles to create a deception that they were members of the Sikh religious community, having created those accounts to target Muslim women.
The police further claimed that while they are still trying to locate the other persons involved in the offence, the timely arrest of the three accused helped in preventing a law-and-order situation.
The affidavit also stated that the investigation is still ongoing and they are trying to unearth the reasons and intention behind the actions of the accused.
Pertinently, it was submitted that further probe will be needed to ascertain whether any person was instigating the arrested-accused to target women from a particular community.
Preliminary probe has revealed that apart from Bulli Bai app, the arrested accused were also active in the Sulli deals app of July 2021 and further probe is required to be done with this regard,” the affidavit said.
The police also said that the three accused knew another accused Neeraj Bishnoi, arrested by the Delhi Police and presently in judicial custody for a similar case registered in Delhi.
The affidavit stated that the accused were amongst those who created the Bulli Bai app and committed the offence together.
As per the investigation carried out so far, the trio during their custodial interrogation accepted that the app was created by Twitter accounts @giyu84, @giyu44 and @giyu94, which in turn used the Github platform to set up the app.
All three accused were operating multiple social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Gmail, and many of the accounts were deleted or suspended for posting defamatory content, the response highlighted.
However, further information regarding the same is yet to be procured, it added.
The affidavit also highlighted how the accused had tried to hide their location history while using their social media accounts by showing that they had logged into their accounts from other countries while continuing to hide their identities.
Bank statements of the accused have to be examined to ascertain whether there were any monetary gains, the affidavit added.
The case was triggered by an app called ‘Bulli Bai’, which appeared on open-source platform GitHub, putting out details of more than 100 Muslim women, allowing users to participate in an ‘auction’ of those women.
Complaints were filed by women who had been targeted by the app, after which the Cyber Cell of the Mumbai Police registered an FIR on January 1 against relevant Twitter handles and the developer of Bulli Bai for offences under the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.
The bail plea for the accused have been filed through advocates Aarti Deshmukh, Shivam Deshmukh and Sandeep Sherkhane.
The bail pleas were argued by the applicant counsel today, and the prosecution will argue their case on January 18, 2022.
