ISLAMABAD: Police in India have announced to prosecute a man who allegedly created an App that put up photos of over 80 Muslim women online labeling them “for sale”.
The police made the announcement after Delhi’s Lieutenant-Governor VK Saxena granted permission to try Aumkareshwar Thakur, who created the Sulli Deals. Hosted on the web platform GitHub in July 2021, Sulli Deals was an open-source App that contained photographs and personal information of dozens of Muslim women online.
Thakur, who holds a degree in computer applications, was detained in January from Indore city in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, but was granted bail in March. He was arrested by a Delhi police team set up to probe serious crimes. The police had registered cases against him under various sections of India’s Information Technology Act, the Indian Penal Code and section 196 of India’s Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC).
Campaign aimed at maligning vocal Muslim women
Sulli Deals took publicly available pictures of women and used them to create profiles for Muslim women, describing them as “deals of the day”.
Thakur was arrested along with Neeraj Bishnoi who allegedly created Bulli Bai – another app that uploaded photos of more than 100 Muslim women and was also hosted on the same service GitHub.
In both cases, there was no actual auction, rather the purpose of the sites was only to malign and humiliate Muslim women, many of whom – mostly journalists, researchers, artists and activists – had been vocal about the rising tide of Hindu nationalism under the current regime of Narendra Modi.
Increased harassment of Muslim, minority women in India
Experts say that online trolling of Muslim women has worsened in recent years in India. Most of the women subjected to online harassment belong to religious minorities and disadvantaged castes.
A 2018 Amnesty International report on online harassment in India indicated that the more vocal a woman was in India, the more likely she was to be made a target of such humiliation and degradation.
