THE COMPLAINANT in the ‘Bulli Bai’ app case in Mumbai has received threats from unknown callers, prompting her to submit a written complaint with the Cyber Police Crime Branch on Sunday. The cyber police have lodged a non-cognisable complaint under Section 506 of the IPC. DCP (cyber) Dr Rashmi Karandikar added that a probe is on to trace the callers.
The complainanant’s FIR led to the arrest of four students. Neeraj Bishnoi, 21, is the alleged creator of the app which had obscene content on 126 Muslim women. The accused were confident they will never get caught and he allegedly communicated this to the three other accused on Twitter groups.
Bishnoi later took to Twitter to abuse Mumbai Police for arresting his team mates, which eventually led to his arrest by the Delhi Police.
Bishnoi, an Assam native who is a second-year engineering student of Vellore Institute of Technology, Bhopal, was suspended from college after his arrest last week. Mumbai Police said they will be seeking his custody.
A cyber police official said Bishnoi and one of the arrested accused, Vishal Kumar Jha, 21, were on a Twitter group when a similar app, Sullideals, was made last year to target prominent Muslim women. Jha had then retweeted and liked tweets on Sullideals, said the official. He also changed the names of his Twitter handles 16 times and his account was suspended by Twitter six times, an official said. Jha, a second-year civil engineering student, told police that he was simply following Bishnoi’s instructions.
None of the three accused — Jha, Shweta Singh, 18, or Mayank Rawat, 21 — knew Bishnoi’s real identity and knew him only as “Giyuâ€, a Japanese gaming character. All of them were allegedly part of a Twitter group where hate messages and memes were shared on issues of religion, current affairs and politics.
Meanwhile, a magistrate court in Bandra on Monday extended the custody of Singh and Rawat till Friday while Vishal Kumar Jha, who tested positive for Covid, has been sent to judicial custody.
