'Bulli Bai' creator: Delhi Police arrests engineering student and 'mastermind'

An engineering student believed to be the ''mastermind'' and creator of the “Bulli Bai” app was arrested on Thursday from Jorhat in Assam and brought to the national capital where he confessed his role, Delhi Police officials said. Niraj Bishnoi, 21, is the fourth person to be arrested for their alleged involvement in the app that has listed hundreds of Muslim women for “auction”. 

The other three, nabbed by Mumbai Police, include a 19-year-old woman from Uttarakhand, also alleged to be a prime accused in the case. Bishnoi, a resident of Jorhat who studies in Bhopal, is the creator of the “Bulli Bai” app on the platform GitHub as well as the main Twitter account holder of “Bulli Bai”, police said. He was arrested by the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police.

''He is the mastermind and the person who had created this application on Github. He has confessed about the creation of the application… forensic remnants of the creation have been found in his laptop. He has been brought to Delhi and will be produced in court today (Thursday) for police custody and further investigation,'' said Deputy Commissioner of Police, IFSO, K P S Malhotra.

“He was arrested early Thursday morning from Jorhat,” the DCP said, adding that IFSO worked out the case using technical analysis, IPDR (Internet Protocol Detail Records) and other gateways. Bishnoi is a second year B Tech student at the Vellore Institute of Technology in the Madhya Pradesh capital, the DCP said.

An Assam Police officer said the operation to arrest him lasted about 12 hours. The arrest took place within hours of information being shared by Delhi Police, a senior officer said.

''Delhi Police have been coordinating with us over the matter. Their team reached on Wednesday morning and by evening, we had located the accused,'' he told PTI. Mumbai Police, which is also probing the case, did not contact the police in Jorhat regarding the accused, he added.

Of the four people arrested, three are 21 years old, two are studying engineering and one is aspiring to, and two are from Uttarakhand. The three arrests made by the cyber cell of Mumbai Police are Uttarakhand teen Shweta Singh, who has passed her Class 12 exam and is planning to study engineering, 21-year-old Mayank Rawal, also from Uttarakhand, and Bengaluru-based Vishal Kumar Jha, a second-year engineering student like Bishnoi and aged 21 too.

According to a senior Mumbai Police officer, Singh is a prime accused who had created the Twitter handle of the app.

Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale told reporters on Wednesday that some more people are likely to be involved in the matter.

Hundreds of Muslim women were listed for “auction” on the “Bulli Bai” mobile application with photographs sourced without permission and doctored. The app appeared to be a clone of “Sulli Deals” which triggered a similar row last year. On Saturday, Delhi Police registered an FIR against unknown persons for allegedly uploading a doctored picture of a woman journalist on a website. The journalist had lodged a complaint and shared a copy on Twitter.

Read more: Prompt move by Mumbai cyber police helps them crack 'Bulli Bai' app case, 3 nabbed so far