Bulli Bai attack: MBA grad held from Odisha

Accused put up photos of Muslim women on the app for ‘auction’

The Mumbai Crime Branch's cyber crime unit arrested a youth from Odisha in the Bulli Bai app case on Thursday. The accused has been identified as Neeraj Singh, 28, an MBA degree holder. City police said they will interrogate him and Neeraj Bishnoi, whose custody they have taken from their Delhi counterparts, together. According to the city police, Singh and Bishnoi had planned together to build the Bulli Bai mobile application.

Bishnoi was arrested from Assam by Delhi police and is currently in the custody of Mumbai police. Mumbai Crime Branch officers said Singh's role came to the fore during the interrogation of another accused arrested in the case earlier. Thereafter, a team of the cyber cell was sent to Odisha for his arrest.

According to Mumbai police, Singh was responsible for the planning and execution of the app. Other accused arrested earlier had told police that the duo had together planned to build the app. One of the accused, Shweta Singh had given the name of Bishnoi, who said she had never met him, but he would give her instructions. They became friends on social media, and Bishnoi had mentioned Nepal as his location on the profile.

Neeraj Bishnoi, one of the main accused arrested from Assam by Delhi police

Crime Branch officers told mid-day, "We have to interrogate both the accused face to face to find out how they came up with the plan to target Muslim women, and whose plan was it to use the name of the Sikh community for that." "Bishnoi is in our custody and we are bringing Singh to Mumbai," an official said.

City police produced Bishnoi and Omkareshwar Thakur, who was arrested by Delhi police earlier, in Bandra court on Thursday and got their custody till January 27. During the hearing, Bishnoi told the court that two innocent people have been arrested, and claimed that there is a threat to his life. While demanding their custody, police said that Bishnoi was part of a group named ‘Trade Mahasabha', an alleged right wing group where the idea of ‘Bulli Bai' was floated. He developed the app on their instructions.

Thakur said that he has no role to play in the ‘Bulli Bai' app case, and that he only created ‘Sulli Deals', a similar app. The police maintained that code and algorithm for both the apps were similar. So far, Mumbai police have arrested six accused in the Bulli Bai app case. They arrested Shweta, 18, and Mayank Rawal, 21 from Uttarakhand, and engineering student Vishal Kumar Jha, 21, from Bengaluru.

Mumbai police had registered an FIR against unidentified persons after complaints that Muslim women's photographs were morphed and put up for ‘auction' on the ‘Bulli Bai' app on open source software platform ‘GitHub'.