The accused, Neeraj Singh, is the Mumbai Police’s fourth arrest of the year and the fifth overall. Young middle-class techies were among those jailed in the Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals instances.
On Thursday, the Mumbai Police made another arrest in the Bulli Bai app case, in which hundreds of Muslim women were put up for ‘auction’ online earlier this month. The accused, Neeraj Singh, was apprehended in Odisha by the Mumbai Police’s crime branch’s cyber wing.
According to the police, Singh was arrested after his involvement in the case came to light during the inquiry, and he would be taken to Mumbai soon.
Neeraj Singh is the fourth and last suspect apprehended by the Mumbai Police Department in connection with the case. Niraj Bishnoi, the main suspect, was apprehended by the Delhi Police on January 6 in Jorhat, Assam. Following his arrest, Bishnoi, an engineering student, was suspended from his institution in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, where he was in his second year.
Vishal Kumar Jha, Shweta Singh, and Mayank Rawat were previously arrested for their roles in the app’s development. Jha was apprehended in Bengaluru, while the other two were apprehended in Uttarakhand.
On January 14, a Mumbai court ordered Singh and Rawat to be held in judicial custody for 14 days, till the 28th of the month.
Last July’s ‘Sulli Deals’ scandal, in which photos of Muslim women were released to the internet without their consent, prompted the Bulli Bai incident. Aumkareshwar Thakur, the app’s founder, was detained on January 9 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, after the current episode sparked new interest in the ‘Sulli Deals’ app.
A Delhi court denied Thakur’s request for bail a week after he was arrested.
Prasanta Patnaik