Investigations by the Delhi and Mumbai police in the cases of two offensive GitHub apps that used doctored photos of Muslim women and then sought to auction them (the women) off, and the third involving a derogatory group chat on Clubhouse has shown that in each case, the suspects knew each other virtually, and that the masterminds behind the two offensive GitHub apps also knew each other. Police said that while many of them knew each other only by the names on their social media profiles, they trusted them enough to share passwords.
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The two police forces have arrested 8 people from Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Assam, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh, and at least six others from Bihar, Delhi and other parts of the country have joined the investigation (the police are still probing the extent of their involvement) role. To be sure, the Mumbai and Delhi police are conducting separate investigations. HT spoke to police officers directly involved in the investigations who explained the connection between the people involved.
The Clubhouse case
Clubhouse is a social audio app with at least two million active users in India. On January 18, Delhi police filed an FIR after a portion of a chat on Clubhouse was shared on social media where the participants were heard making derogatory comments about Muslim women. The following day, the Mumbai police too filed an FIR. On January 21, the Mumbai police arrested Akash Suyal(19), a third-year student from Karnal, Haryana. Police said Suyal was one of the participants of the offensive chat group, with the ID Kira xd. Other participants too joined the chat with made-up names such as Bismillah(in the name of God), Sallos, Aanchal, and K. The investigation has now revealed that Akash Suyal knew Naumaan Jabber, a resident of Jodhpur. Jabber, who was questioned by Delhi police in the same case, revealed that he knew Suyal virtually and, on January 6 created an account @vercase_on_me as a back-up account to his main handle @mr_casanova .
“Jabber shared the account details of @vercase_on_me with Suyal. Suyal later changed it to Kira xd. The two knew each other on Clubhouse and trusted each other with the passwords. These misguided young people all believe that they have the same purpose on social media....,” said DCP KPS Malhotra, chief of the Delhi police’s Intelligent Fusion Strategic Operations unit.
{{/usCountry}}“Jabber shared the account details of @vercase_on_me with Suyal. Suyal later changed it to Kira xd. The two knew each other on Clubhouse and trusted each other with the passwords. These misguided young people all believe that they have the same purpose on social media....,” said DCP KPS Malhotra, chief of the Delhi police’s Intelligent Fusion Strategic Operations unit.
{{/usCountry}}Akash Suyal was friends with two other suspects. “Suyal was known to Rahul Kapoor, who created the audio chat room. Kapoor has joined the investigation with Delhi police and we have already recorded his statement. Kapoor, a resident of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, also confirmed that he created the chat room on the instruction of a person with the username Sallos. He knew Sallos virtually, but did not know that behind the ID was a 17-year-old class 12 student. Sallos claimed to be a management student. Sallos, Suyal and Kapoor were all connected virtually. Kapoor even handed the moderator keys of the audio group to Sallos. Such was the trust between them,” said a police officer who asked not to be named.
Delhi police are yet to make any arrests in the Clubhouse case because DCP Malhotra said police are trying to build a “water-tight case” against the suspects. “We will approach the court and get permission to record voice samples. The whole Clubhouse case is based on a video in which the suspects are heard making derogatory comments. This case is different than the GitHub cases. The voices of the shared clip have to match with these suspects for the case to stand in court,” said DCP Malhotra.
Bulli Bai and Sulli Deals
The controversial chat on Clubhouse is the third such case in the last 8 months in which Muslim women were targeted on social media platforms. The first was the Sulli Deals app on GitHub in July and the second one was Bulli Bai app . Both featured doctored photographs of Muslim women along with offensive and derogatory comments. Similar to the Clubhouse investigation, both the Delhi and Mumbai police have filed separate cases.
The Mumbai police arrested three suspects in the Bulli Bai case, while the Delhi police arrested one suspect each in the Bulli Bai and the Sulli Deals case. Neeraj Bishnoi (21), a second year B Tech student was arrested in the first case from Jorhat, Assam. Aumkareshwar Thakur (26), a freelance web designer was arrested in the Sulli Deals case from Indore. The two are believed to be the creators of the two apps.
The three suspects Mumbai police arrested in the case are Sweta Singh (18), her friend Mayank Rawat (20), both residents of Uttarakhand, and Vishal Kumar Jha (21), an engineering student from Bengaluru. The Mumbai police have said that the three were promoting the Bulli Bai app created by Bishnoi .
Sometime in the third week of November, while in Jaipur, where he had gone to attend a wedding in the family, Bishnoi built the Bulli Bai app on GitHub. It took him about three days to come up with the app, according to the investigators. About a month later, after he returned home to Jorhat, Assam, he updated the app. “He needed to promote the app on social media. The first twitter account he used to promote the app was that of his social media friend, Sweta Singh(arrested by Mumbai police). The two were friends for more than a year and met on Twitter. Singh gave Bishnoi access to her account, “She gave the password to Bishnoi. Bishnoi told her he was a citizen of Nepal. They also spoke for hours. He claimed he even consoled her when her father died of Covid-19. Her mother had died of cancer,” said a second investigator who asked not to be named.
In his disclosure statement before the police that was submitted in court, Bishnoi has mentioned that he came in contact with the three through “random conversations on Hindu religion/community.”
Had Bishnoi not mentioned the involvement of his Twitter friend in the Sulli Deals case, that may never have been solved. After the app generated outrage in July last year, its creator went to the ground. It was only thanks to Bishnoi that the Delhi Police arrested Aumkareshwar Thakur(26), a freelance web designer. ”When Bishnoi was arrested and we started questioning him, he told us about his twitter friend Thakur, who was the creator of Sulli Deals,” DCP Malhotra said.
Bishnoi and Thakur too were friends only on social media but came together virtually to build the offensive apps. Police have said that the two were part of Twitter group, Tradmahasabha, where, in January 2020, a plan to defame Muslim women was hatched. Thakur joined the group using one of his handles @gangescion. Bishnoi too was in the group . Bishnoi copied the codes of the Thakur’s Github app to build his own version of the app and called it Bulli deals.
On January 9, when Thakur was brought to the ISFO headquarters in Delhi, after being arrested in Indore, it was the first time that he met Bishnoi in person.