An 18-year-old woman and a 21-year-old engineering student, who allegedly met on social media due to their common interest in Hindutva ideology and later allegedly collaborated to put up webpages where hundreds of Muslim women were “auctioned”, were arrested on Tuesday.
The arrests were made by Mumbai Police, which is probing two such controversial webpages hosted on the code sharing platform, GitHub. The first web page was floated in July 2021 and the second, Bulli Bai, surfaced on January 1. The webpages, which were named after derogatory references to the Muslim community, sparked outrage because hundreds of Muslim women -- most of whom were vocal activists or top professionals -- were listed for “auction” along with their photographs, which were sourced without permission and doctored.
Activists pointed out that despite complaints, no action was taken in the July case, and that the pages were meant to demean Muslim women.
The man, Vishal Kumar Jha, was allegedly running one of Twitter handles that was used to upload links to the websites, said an officer from the Mumbai cybercrime cell. Singh’s alleged role was not clear.
The woman, Shweta Singh, lived in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district with her three siblings and had lost her father to Covid-19 in May last year and her mother to cancer in 2011. She was deeply involved in Hindutva ideology and often posted such content on social media, said a senior Uttarakhand police officer with knowledge of developments.
{{/usCountry}}The woman, Shweta Singh, lived in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district with her three siblings and had lost her father to Covid-19 in May last year and her mother to cancer in 2011. She was deeply involved in Hindutva ideology and often posted such content on social media, said a senior Uttarakhand police officer with knowledge of developments.
{{/usCountry}}“They both came in contact on the microblogging platform while commenting on a right wing post. Following that, they became friends and shared their contact numbers. They then started speaking to each other and chatting on WhatsApp sharing their common ideology,” said the senior Uttarakhand police officer quoted above, requesting anonymity.
“She had no regrets for what she did,” he added.
Jha was held in Bengaluru for questioning on Monday and brought to Mumbai in the evening, said joint commissioner of police (crime), Milind Bharambe.”He was questioned and several facts were verified. and after his role was found involved in the crime, he was arrested,” he added.
Kumar was remanded to cyber police custody till January 10, the officer said.
“There seems to be a much bigger network behind such coordinate crimes and I am confident that Mumbai Police will soon unearth the entire nexus that is enabling such hate crimes against women in our country,” said Maharashtra minister Satej Patil.
A Mumbai Police team arrested Singh from Rudrapur city in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar district.
A second Uttarakhand police officer said the woman hailed from an economically weak background, had lost both her parents and was living with three siblings. “She had passed class 12 examinations but was yet to take admission in the college for higher studies,” said the officer, requesting anonymity.
During her questioning, she told the police that she took the help of an acquaintance in Nepal and added that this man -- who she allegedly identified as Giyou -- had uploaded the women’s photos, said the second police officer.
The woman was produced before a local court for transit remand, the officer added. The court granted the transit remand of the woman to Mumbai police.
Uttarakhand director general of police Ashok Kumar confirmed the development.
“Uttarakhand police only provided them (Mumbai police team) assistance in their action by sending a woman constable to arrest the accused. Uttarakhand police didn’t question the accused as the probe is conducted by the Mumbai police,” he said.
Jha’s advocate Dinesh Prajapati said, “My client is falsely implicated in the case. During an argument i requested before the court for short police custody which was granted.”
On January 2, Mumbai cyber police registered a First Information Report under sections 153A (to punish persons who indulge in wanton vilification or attacks upon the religion, race, place of birth, residence, language etc of any particular group or class or upon the founders and prophets of a religion), 153 B (Imputations, assertions prejudicial to national-integration) 295A, (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs), 354D, (Stalking is unwanted or repeated surveillance by an individual or group towards another person), 509 (Word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 500 (Punishment for defamation) Indian Penal Code along with section 67 Information technology act against unknown people.. The case was based on statements of some women whose pictures were used on the webpage.
The same day, Union minister for electronics and information technology Ashwini Vaishnaw said the account of the user who made the webpages had been blocked by GitHub after a government missive. Delhi Police also registered an FIR. “Our cyber cell team is probing the case. The investigation is in on the right track. At this stage, it won’t be appropriate to share further information,” said city police spokesperson Chinmoy Biswal.
(With inputs from HTC, Delhi)