Vishal Kumar Jha, an alleged suspect in the ongoing ‘Bulli Bai’ app case, was denied anticipatory bail by a Delhi court, on Saturday.
A week before Jha’s bail rejection, 20-year-old Neeraj Bishnoi, allegedly the main creator and conspirator behind the app, was also denied bail, as per a Live Law report.
In Jha’s case, the court observed that the conduct of the accused persons in the matter is “against the ever cherished constitutional ethos of secularism and fraternity ensuring dignity of any individual and modesty of a woman.”
The matter came to the forefront after nearly 112 Muslim women found themselves listed on an online auction app, including actor Shabana Azmi, journalists such as Ismat Ara, Arfa Khanum Sherwani, Fatima Khan and Kashmir-based Quratulain Rehbar, author Saba Naqvi, poet Nabiya Khan, RJ Sayema, Pakistani Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai, activist Khalida Parveen, and several other female Muslim activists, who frequently voice their opinions on social media.
The app hosted on GitHub uploaded pictures of the Muslim women and their Twitter handles as part of a fake ‘online auction’ along with the caption ‘Bulli of the day’. Nearly 80 Muslim women were earlier listed “for sale” on a similar fake online auction known as ‘Sulli Deals‘, also hosted by GitHub in July 2021.
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After complaints were registered by the women, on January 3, the Mumbai Police Cyber Cell detained and arrested 18-year-old Shweta Singh from Uttarakhand. Jha was the first to be arrested from Bangalore, in connection to the case. He maintained that he was falsely implicated in the case, accused of merely following the Bulli Bai app, and is not a flight risk. He applied for bail, based on grounds that the prosecution had failed to produce concrete evidence supporting the allegations made against him, in the case.
Shortly after, police arrested 21-year-old Mayank Rawat from Uttarakhand, and finally prime accused Bishnoi, on January 6.
While both Singh and Jha were remanded to a 14-day judicial custody, last week, Bishnoi was sent to five-days of police custody until January 27.