The app, which has now been taken down, displayed more than 100 women ‘for sale’; Delhi and Mumbai Police file an FIR in the case
Image used for representational purposes only. AFP
The New Year began on a controversial note when photographs of more than 100 Muslim women, including prominent actor Shabana Azami, wife of a sitting judge of Delhi High Court, multiple journalists, activists and politicians, were uploaded for auction on an app.
The row surrounding the app named ‘Bulli Bai’ is similar to last July’s ‘Sulli Deals’, in which nearly 80 Muslim women were put up ‘for sale’.
Take a look at what the row is all about and how people reacted to the app.
‘Bulli Bai’ app
The ‘Bulli Bai’ app was created on the Microsoft-owned open software development site GitHub.
For those who don’t know, ‘Bulli’ is a derogatory word used for Muslim women in local slang.
Twitter has suspended an account that had been sharing links to the app hosted on GitHub. The Twitter handle had the same name as the objectionable app.
Earlier in June 2021, another app with a name similar to the one currently under investigation had appeared on GitHub with pictures of Muslim women captioned ‘deal of the day’.
Subsequently, on 7 and 8 July, police in Noida and Delhi had registered separate FIRs against unknown persons in the case, but nothing has come out of the investigations so far.
The incident went viral when a woman journalist shared an image of her being sold on the Bulli Bai app as ‘deal of the day’.
Taking to Twitter, the journalist said it was “very sad that as a Muslim woman you have to start your new year with this sense of fear & disgust.”
Quratulain Rehbar, a journalist from Kashmir, was also listed on the ‘online auction’.
She was quoted as telling Al Jazeera: “When I saw my photograph, my throat got heavy, I had goosebumps on my arms and I was numb. It was shocking and humiliating.”