New Delhi: The alleged creator of the auction app ‘Sulli Deals’ was granted bail by a Delhi court on Monday, March 28, the Deccan Herald reported.
While granting bail to Aumkareshwar Thakur (26), chief metropolitan magistrate of the Patiala House court, Pankaj Kumar, noted that he was a “first-time offender” and that “prolonged incarceration could be detrimental to his overall well-being”.
The responses of several intermediaries as well as the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) are awaited in the case and since Thakur cannot possibly influence the results of the FSL report, the awaited responses cannot be grounds to deny him bail.
The accused has roots in the community and is not a flight risk, the court order said, according to the Deccan Herald report. As such, Thakur was granted bail subject to the furnishing of a Rs 50,000 bond with conditions.
Sulli Deals, hosted on GitHub, was an app that staged ‘auctions’ for Muslim women by using doctored images of them without their consent, accompanied with derogatory remarks. It had surfaced in July, 2021, and the Delhi police had registered a first information report (FIR) on July 8 that year under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 345A (sexual harassment).
Thakur, a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested by Delhi police from his residence on January 9 this year.
Thakur’s arrest had come after another app, ‘Bulli Bai’, had surfaced in January this year, which bore a striking resemblance to ‘Sulli Deals’ and also featured staged auctions of prominent Muslim women, along with sharing manipulated images of them without their consent.
Also read: ‘Bulli Bai’, ‘Sulli Deals’: On Being Put Up for ‘Auction’ as an Indian Muslim Woman
The alleged creator of the ‘Bulli Bai’ app, Neeraj Bishnoi, was arrested on January 6, three days before Thakur’s arrest. According to a report by the Hindu, Bishnoi, too, was granted bail by the Patiala House court on Monday.
However, despite the grant of bail, Thakur is not free to leave custody since he was named in another chargesheet in the case, which had been filed by the Mumbai police.
A Delhi court had earlier denied Thakur’s bail plea in January, noting that at the time, the investigation into the matter was at a “nascent stage” and the grant of bail would “prejudice a fair investigation”.