Bulli Bai App- Are women safe online?
In January 2022, the controversy erupted over the Bulli Bai App, similar to the ‘Sully Deal,’ wherein around 80 Muslim women were put for online sale. “Sulli” and “Bulli” are offensive slang terms used to refer to Muslim women. The Bulli Bai application puts together a list of Muslim women for an “auction” at Github. Github is the open software development site owned by Microsoft. Among the 100 Muslim women listed on the app were prominent personalities such as actress Shabana Azmi and Malala Yousafzai. Moreover, the list featured Fatima Nafees, the mother of Najeeb Ahmed, a JNU student who went missing. Hundreds of Muslim women’s photographs were used without permission and doctored to put up on the app for “auction.”
Niraj Bishnoi, a 21-year-old engineering student from
Assam's Jorhat region, has been arrested by Delhi Police. He is alleged to be
the key conspirator and developer of the Bulli Bai app on GitHub and the app's
main Twitter account holder. Additionally, a 21-year-old engineering student named
Vishal Kumar Jha and an 18-year-old engineering aspirant named Shweta Singh,
the main accused, have also been arrested from Bengaluru and Uttarakhand.
After multiple posts from the Bulli Bai app on
Twitter, the authorities ordered the social media platform to remove all
abusive posts immediately. Even though Github suspended the accounts used to
develop the app, it did not provide the government authorities with the required
information. Github, a company based out of India, did not comply with Indian
legislation. As a result, authorities
must follow a method specified in the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT) to
request foreign corporations’ information to request information from foreign
corporations. (MLAT). It
is a lengthy procedure and involves multiple
foreign ministries. Github has simply taken down the app as it violates its
community guidelines without revealing the persons’ identity.
In terms of the law, this incident has
violated these women's right to privacy, which is a fundamental right granted
by Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The nine-judge bench of the Supreme Court unanimously
observed in Justice K.S. Puttaswamy
(Retd.) v. Union of India that Privacy is a constitutionally
protected right that derives in many settings from the other aspects of freedom
and dignity recognized and protected by Part III of the Indian constitution, as
well as from the guarantee of life and personal liberty in Article 21 of the
constitution. It’s
further a threat to their life and personal liberty as expressly guaranteed
under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. Women’s images being uploaded and
auctioned on Github regularly point to a concerning trend in online safety.
Apart from invading users' privacy, the app facilitates Muslim women's human
trafficking by portraying them as commodities to be sold and bought as the
app's male users consider fit. Therefore, the app violated women's constitutional
rights to dignity, privacy, and bodily autonomy when auctioned.
Online gender-based violence is as devastating as offline gender-based violence, entrenched in societal gender inequalities. If left unchecked, online abuse like this will have a chilling effect on women and lead to self-censorship. Such incidents could also have long-term mental health implications. Cyberviolence, which has sexual undertones, such as the Bulli Bai app, depicts a misogynistic and Islamophobic society. Such a society denies women their right to equal participation in political, social, and cultural life.
Dr. M.N Rahman
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