Bulli Bai row: 'Mastermind' nabbed by Delhi Police from Assam

GUWAHATI/BHOPAL/MUMBAI: Neeraj Bishnoi, the alleged key conspirator and creator of Bulli Bai on GitHub and the app’s prime Twitter account holder, was arrested by a team of Delhi Police from Assam’s Jorhat on Wednesday night.

The 21-year-old, a resident of the upper Assam town, was taken to Delhi by air by Delhi Police on Thursday.

This is the fourth arrest made so far. Earlier, the Mumbai Police had arrested three persons in the case. The Bulli Bai App targeted Muslim women by putting their images online for auctions. FIRs were lodged in Delhi and Mumbai following complaints by women.

Neeraj is a B.Tech second-year computer science (gaming) student at the Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Bhopal University, located in Kothri Kalan village of Sehore district, Madhya Pradesh. The institute suspended him on Thursday after his involvement in the case was reported in the media.

Jorhat SP Ankur Jain told The New Indian Express that Neeraj returned to Jorhat on December 25 following the outbreak of COVID’S third wave and was doing the classes online from home.

“The Delhi Police had sought our help to locate the accused and shared the details. A joint team of Delhi Police and Assam Police located him last (Wednesday) night at Digambar Chowk of Jorhat,” Jain said.

“I think he did something wrong before coming to Jorhat. When COVID emerged (third wave), he and the others arrested went to their respective places,” the SP said.

It needs to be ascertained if the others arrested are the students of VIT, Bhopal University and if they met one another somewhere else like at a training programme. Delhi Police will look into it, Jain said, adding the police stations in Jorhat have no cases registered against Neeraj.

The father of the accused runs a grocery-cum-government PDS shop in Jorhat. He said his son was picked up by a three-member Delhi Police team along with Assam cops.

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“The team spent around 45 minutes at our residence. They seized my son’s laptop and the mobile phone that belongs to my wife before taking him away. My son would use this mobile phone as he doesn’t have one,” the father said.

He claimed Neeraj is innocent. He said his son would fully cooperate with Delhi Police.

Neeraj is a bright student, family sources added.

He had recently stayed in Delhi at his sister’s house to attend a marriage ceremony and was planning to come to Bhopal soon, but had to shelve it due to the pandemic.

Neeraj has two sisters and is the youngest in the family. The family originally hails from Rutoot village in Jayal Tehsil of Rajasthan’s Nagaur district but he has been brought up in Assam.

He did his schooling in Assam and got enrolled at the VIT, Bhopal University in September 2020.

“Since then, he, like the other students, hasn’t physically been present at the institute, as the classes are going on via online mode,” ASP-Sehore Sameer Yadav said.

The Delhi Police till Thursday evening did not contact Sehore Police in connection with the case.

The Mumbai Police claimed the trio they arrested apparently used names related to the Sikh community on their Twitter handles to mislead people about their identity.

Shweta Singh, the 18-year-old woman arrested from Uttarakhand by the cyber cell of city police, was the prime accused who had created the app’s Twitter handle, a senior Mumbai Police official said.

The accused, who is class 12 pass and was planning to pursue engineering, was acting on the instructions of one “Giyou” based in Nepal.

(With inputs from Anuraag Singh in Bhopal and Sudhir Suryawanshi in Mumbai)

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