Sulli Deals: India’s police to put on trial man who ‘auctioned’ photos of Muslim women
One of India’s top officials asked the Delhi police to prosecute a man accused of creating an app to ”auction” off more than 80 Muslim women last year.
Capital Delhi’s lieutenant governor VK Saxena granted his sanction to try 25-year-old Aumkareshwar Thakur in court, news agency Press Trust of India reported, citing officials.
Police officials will now initiate criminal charges against Mr Thakur who allegedly created the app and a “Sulli deals” Twitter handle for virtually puting up for “sale” Muslim women, including prominent voices who criticised Narendra Modi’s right-wing administration, in 2021.
His application was hosted by Github and contained photos and details of hundreds of Muslim women, sourced without their consent, in a cyber crime against the minority community.
The app allowed a user to generate a “deal of the day” out of the dozens of profiles of Muslim women.
Mr Thakur will be prosecuted under India’s information technology act, along with sections of criminal law used for offences against the state and criminal conspiracy to commit such offence.
The city-state’s top officer “is of the considered view that a prima facie case is made out against the accused, and therefore, the sanction is granted for prosecuting the accused for the commission of the offences”, the report said.
Delhi police registered the first complaint in July last year.
The accused, a computer applications graduate from central India’s Indore city, was arrested in January but granted bail in March this year.
While the app was taken down after nationwide outcry, and many who promoted the platform on Twitter disabled their accounts, no arrests were made for months. But another app with a similar interface made headlines shortly after, titled “Bulli Bai”. These are derogatory terms to target Muslim women. The creator of this app, Neeraj Bishnoi, was also arrested and led the police’s search for Mr Thakur.
Several women had criticised the Delhi police’s handling of the “Sulli deals” case and their inability to make any arrests, alleging that they were protecting the criminals.
