Bulli Bai App Case: MBA Graduate In Odisha Involved In Planning Arrested By Mumbai Police

A 28-year-old man from Odisha was arrested by the cyber police of the Mumbai crime branch in connection with the case of Bulli Bai app controversy.

Mumbai: A 28-year-old man from Odisha on Thursday was arrested by the cyber police of the Mumbai crime branch in connection with the case of Bulli Bai app controversy which targeted women of a particular community by putting up their images online for “auction”. The accused, an MBA degree holder, has been identified as Neeraj Singh.

Police said Neeraj Singh was involved in the planning of the app with the main accused. “His role came to light during the interrogation of the accused who were arrested earlier, following which a team of the cyber police station was sent to Odisha and he was placed under arrest,” the official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Singh is being brought to Mumbai and will be produced in a court in the city, he said.

With his arrest, the Mumbai police have so far arrested four persons in the case. Earlier, Shweta Singh (18) and Mayank Rawal (21) were arrested from Uttarakhand, while engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha (21) was held from Bengaluru. Neeraj Bishnoi, one of the alleged main conspirators in the Bulli Bai app case, had been arrested by Delhi police from Assam.

The Mumbai police had registered a First Information Report (FIR) against unidentified persons following complaints that doctored photographs of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded for auction’ on the app called `Bulli Bai’, hosted on the open-source software platform GitHub.

While there was no actual `auction’ or `sale’, the purpose of the app seemed to be to humiliate and intimidate the targeted women, many of whom are active social media users.