Delhi Police FIR over online abuse of Muslim women
New Delhi: The Delhi Police Cyber Cell has lodged an FIR pertaining to the incident involving the online auctioning off of Muslim women on an online platform called "GitHub" by an unidentified group by the name of "Sulli Deals", a day after the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) had taken suo motu cognisance of the offence and had issued notice to Delhi Police to register an FIR into the case and file an action taken report in this regard.
In an official press statement, Delhi Police spokesperson Chinmoy Biswal said that acting on a complaint received on National Cybercrime Reporting Portal regarding Sulli Deals Mobile Application, a case FIR under section 354-A of IPC has been registered by Cyber Crime Unit on July 7 and investigation has been taken up. "Notices have been sent to GitHub to share the relevant details," Biswal added.
In a notice issued on Wednesday, DCW Chief Swati Maliwal had stated that it has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports of several pictures of Muslim women being uploaded online and being auctioned off without their consent. Stating that several women had to leave social media platforms after their pictures were uploaded online, the DCW notice stated, "This is a very serious matter and constitutes cybercrime".
The notice was served to DCP (CyPAD) Anyesh Roy, and asked police to provide a copy of the FIR in the matter, details of the accused identified and a detailed action taken report in this regard.
Significantly, an FIR pertaining to the incident has also been filed at Commissionerate GB Nagar by one of the victims, Hana Mohsin Khan, which stated that she got to know from Twitter on July 4 that her photos have been uploaded on the said website without her consent and they were being "auctioned off" to customers. The screenshot of the website was further uploaded on Twitter where she was subsequently harassed and threatened by users, she said.
And as pleas for the National Commission for Women to take cognizance of the matter fell on deaf ears for the first few days of the racket emerging, its chief Rekha Sharma on Thursday wrote to the Delhi Police chief, taking "suo-motu" cognizance of the crime and seeking an FIR in the case so that the perpetrators of the crime "cannot escape punishment".
The NCW chief went on to seek a detailed action taken report from the Delhi Police within the next 10 days, also marking the letter to the Cyber Crime DCP.
The Editors Guild of India has also now issued a statement with regard to the incident and had termed the said auctioning of women as "reprehensible" and "symptomatic of the underlying misogyny in some sections of the society.
