BENGALURU/MUMBAI/DEHRADUN: The Mumbai Police on Tuesday arrested an engineering student from Bengaluru and a woman from Uttarakhand for their hate-spewing ‘Bulli Bai’ app that showed morphed images of hundreds of Muslim women claiming they were up for auction.
While a Mumbai court remanded the student, Vishal Kumar Jha (21) in police custody till January 10, Uttarakhand’s Shweta Singh (18), who lives in Rudrapur city of Udham Singh Nagar district, was granted transit remand for being taken to Mumbai.
While speculation was rife that Singh was the key accused, there was no clarity on the matter. Jha, a resident of Kumaraswamy Layout in Bengaluru, was summoned for questioning on Monday evening to Mumbai.
"He had taken the late evening flight to Mumbai after being summoned. He was questioned by the Cyber Crime Branch and arrested on Tuesday morning,” said sources.
The Mumbai police kept the entire operation under wraps. They tracked Jha down through his IP address on Twitter.
Bengaluru City Police Commissioner Kamal Pant told this newspaper that the city police had no information about the arrest.
“The Mumbai Police neither informed us nor did they seek any help,” he said. In Uttarakhand’s Rudrapur, Superintendent of Police (City) Mamta Vohra said, “Singh confessed to her involvement in posting pictures and hate messages using at least three accounts.”
Sources said she came in contact with Jha through social media and developed ideological kinship. Singh cleared her Class XII Boards last year and was preparing for engineering admission.
As for Jha, one of the accounts operated by him was named Khalsa Supremacist, apparently to make it look like a Khalistani mischief. But on December 31, he changed its name to target a particular community, sources said.
The police action came after an FIR was filed under various sections of the IPC and the Information Technology Act.