'BulliBai': Neeraj Bishnoi denied bail; app an affront to dignity of women of one community, notes court

New Delhi: A local court on Friday noted that the "BulliBai" app - allegedly created by 20-year-old engineering student Neeraj Bishnoi, was an "affront to the dignity of women of a particular community" and a "vilification campaign" with "communal overtones" while rejecting the prime accused's bail plea in the case.

Bishnoi was arrested by the Delhi Police earlier this month and has been accused of creating the "BulliBai" application, on which pictures of prominent, influential and outspoken Muslim women were used in an attempt to "auction" them off.

Deciding Bishnoi's bail application, Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma refused the relief saying his act was an affront to the dignity of Muslim women and communal harmony of the society.

"The facts disclose that accused created the app 'Bulli Bai' where women journalists and celebrities of a particular community who are famous on social media are targeted and they are projected in a bad light with an objective to insult and humiliate them by objectification," the court noted.

"A vilification campaign against these women containing derogatory content and offending material having communal overtones was run on this app being made by the accused," it added.

"The act of the accused is apparently an affront to the dignity of the women of particular community and communal harmony of the society," the judge said.

Twenty-year-old Bishnoi submitted to the court that he was purportedly falsely accused in the case and that he had nothing to do with the offence in question.

The counsel for the complainant, a journalist with a prominent news website, opposed the bail application, saying the photographs of some prominent Muslim women were picked for the purpose of insulting and outraging their modesty by making sexually coloured remarks.

The app put out details of more than 100 prominent Muslim women allowing users to participate in an "auction" of those women and came less than six months after an identical application known as "SulliDeals" came to light.

Significantly, the Delhi Police have said that they have found a group called "Tradmahasabha" on Twitter, where they believe the idea to specifically target, harass and troll Muslim women through such applications originated. They said this was based on his purported confession to interrogators and statements from the creator of the "SulliDeals" application — Aumkareshwar Thakur, a 25-year-old techie.

Both Thakur and Bishnoi allegedly confirmed that they were part of the Twitter group comprising "trads" or "traditionalists" — a group of radicalised alt-right dominating social media — who refuse to believe in the Constitution and want the country to be turned into a "Hindu Rashtra".