In a series of unfortunate events, an app called ‘bulli bai’ had listed 100 influential women allegedly to be auctioned off. This is the second time it is happening in the last two years.
The constitution of India has given equal rights to all irrespective of the gender they belong to, but such heinous crimes have left the nation in a state of shock. This is a new low for the crimes against women in India. The app which was released by GitHub has now been taken down after a woman journalist’s FIR, a public outcry. The police could get some information about the app through a tweet that was sent out about the ‘Bulli’ app.
Mumbai police had registered FIR after various complaints were filed regarding the doctored photographs that were uploaded on the app for ‘auction’. So far three people have already been arrested by the police in regard to the case. Three people called Mayank Rawal aged 21 years were arrested from the state of Uttarakhand in the early hours on January 5, Shweta Singh aged 19 years was also arrested from Uttarakhand on Tuesday and an engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha aged 21 years was arrested from Bengaluru on Monday. The police suspect the involvement of more people as well.
This is not the first time, such a sexist app has been identified where women were harassed online, another app called ‘Sulli Deals’ was found six months ago where the site had made pictures of Muslim women appear publicly and described them as “Deals of the Day”. Most of these women in both cases have been highly influential women, those who have had a social media presence including professionals and journalists as well.
Crimes of such atrocious nature can not be deemed as ordinary, these are definitely organized cybercrimes. Investigations have been launched by the Mumbai and Delhi police separately. Although the Mumbai cyber police have arrested the Bulli app developers and Twitter account holders, the investigation in the Sulli Deals case has not made significant progress even after six months.
The taking down of the apps does not mean that the crime has halted. The government should use the resources to track down the criminals and punish them accordingly. The crimes in cyberspace in our country especially against women have been increasing at an alarming rate. The cases that are reported are barely half the number of the overall cases faced by the women. These cases are not only a testament to the wrong attitude towards women but also a monstrous attitude towards the women of the minority community.
The lack of proper action against the offenders will only encourage the rest of them who are not even caught. The authorities should therefore take effective action against all such people who have been booked under the Bulli Bai case as well.