Mumbai: Mumbai cyber police have arrested one more student from Uttarakhand in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ app case.
“The student, identified as Mayank Rawal (21), was nabbed from the northern state in the early hours of Wednesday,” an official told PTI on Wednesday, January 5.
Rawat is from Kotdwar in Pauri district and is a Chemistry honours student of Delhi University’s Zakir Hussain College. He is the son of Army Subedar Pradeep Rawat.
A resident of Nimbhuchaud area in Kotdwar, Rawat had come home on vacation.
After being picked up by the Mumbai Police from home between 2-3 am, he told his interrogators that he had created his Twitter account in 2020 and “has many virtual friends.”
PTI reported that said he received a link through a message on December 31 and was asked to join it. He admitted that he took seven to eight screenshots and shared them on his timeline.
However, when he came to know that an FIR had been registered on the app he deactivated it. The police have recovered his mobile phone on which objectionable screenshots and posts shared by him are available, the officials said.
The cyber cell of Mumbai police had earlier arrested Shweta Singh (18), alleged to be the main culprit, from Uttarakhand, and an engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha (21) from Bengaluru in connection with the case.
Also read: Media Bodies Condemn ‘Bulli Bai’ App, Criticise Police Inaction in Previous ‘Auction’
Mumbai police commissioner Hemant Nagrale told reporters that police have found that five persons were following the ‘Bulli Bai’ app. “Of them three are arrested. All five were questioned and their online interactions were tracked,” he added.
Police have also come to know who the operators of the app are and who had initiated the Twitter handles.
Nagrale added that police were not forthcoming about details of the case primarily because “the accused people who are not apprehended so far might try to destroy evidence as most of the investigation is online and on Internet.”
“I request you all to cooperate with us and not insist on too many details,” he told reporters.
The Mumbai police had registered a first information report (FIR) against unidentified persons following complaints that doctored photographs of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded for auction’ on the app called ‘Bulli Bai’, hosted on the open-source software platform GitHub.
The purpose of the app seemed to be to humiliate and intimidate the targeted women, many of whom are active social media users.
The Mumbai cyber police station has also registered a case against the app’s unidentified developers and Twitter handles which promoted it.
Note: This article was updated and republished at 2:30 pm on January 5, 2021 with additional inputs. It was first published as a news agency copy at 11:15 am on the same day.