New Delhi: A Delhi court has dismissed the bail plea of Aumkareshwar Tripathi, the man arrested by the Delhi Police for allegedly creating the Sulli Deals app, saying that granting him relief at this juncture will prejudice a fair investigation, noting the severity of the offence in question.
In July, last year, the app was made on the Github platform, where pictures of prominent, influential and outspoken Muslim women were put up on the application in a bid to "auction" the women. After several complainants came forward on Twitter and made police complaints, the Delhi Police picked up the matter and registered an FIR.
However, after six months of waiting for replies from GitHub, the Delhi Police tracked him down after having arrested Neeraj Bishnoi, the alleged creator of the BulliBai application, who purportedly led the police to Thakur. Bishnoi was last week denied bail by a Delhi court in this case as well.
Metropolitan Magistrate Vasundhra Chhaunkar passed the order on Thakur's bail application on Saturday after hearing arguments from the accused as well as the prosecution.
During the arguments, the police claimed that it has come to light that the accused is a member of 'Trademahasabha' and he created the application on GitHub, and he and other people posted pictures of Muslim women for online auction.
The court at this stage cannot ignore the peculiar facts of the case which reflect upon the severity and gravity of the alleged acts of the accused, it said.
"Further, the misuse of technology and the impact of the alleged acts on the larger section of society cannot be reduced to negligible when being compared to the other offences with harsher punishment," it said about the gravity of the offence and its implications on society.
"Prima facie, at this stage, the arguments of the counsel for the accused do not hold water as certainly the women of Muslim community only have been targeted by posting their pictures for auction," the court held.
The court noted that the accused had consciously used 'Tor Browser' so that his identity could not be disclosed and a number of complaints were received against the app, which were pending across India.
"The investigation is at a nascent stage where crucial evidence and further chain of events are yet to be conclusively unearthed. Granting bail to the accused at this juncture will prejudice a fair investigation," it said.
The accused was arrested by the IFSO unit of Delhi Police's Special Cell from Indore last week after receiving information about him from Bulli Bai app case mastermind Neeraj Bishnoi during the investigation.
The Delhi Police, during the investigation, found out that Bishnoi and Thakur were connected over the Internet and had also established that they had contacted each other the "Trademahasabha" Twitter group, where they believe the idea for building apps such as BulliBai and SulliDeals were first discussed.