NEW DELHI: A key suspect in the case related to the Sulli Deals application on GitHub, which enabled people to bid for Muslim women in an online "auction", was arrested by Delhi Police’s Special Cell.
A source said that the interrogation of Niraj Bishnoi, arrested for creating a similar application, Bulli Bai on GitHub, provided a lead that led to the arrest.
A source said that the suspect had been detained on Saturday evening from Madhya Pradesh after Bishnoi admitted during interrogation of being in touch with the creator of Twitter handle @sullideals and the app, Sulli Deals. He also admitted that he copied the source code of that application on GitHub and edited it for his Bulli Bai app.
"Bishnoi’s claim of being in touch with the Sulli Deals creator was corroborated by a Twitter account used by him in an FIR registered at Kishangarh police station last year. In this FIR, the Twitter account used by him had shown the photograph of a woman for auction," revealed a police officer. This account, @giyu007, was highlighted when the Sulli case was being investigated.
Through this handle, Bishnoi had tried to plant some information regarding the possible propagator of Sulli app. "Bishnoi also created a fake profile of a girl and tried to communicate with the investigating officer as a news reporter," said the officer.
Bishnoi has turned out to be a habitual hacker who defaced websites since he was 15 years old, police said on Saturday. He had allegedly hacked and defaced various websites of schools and universities in India and Pakistan, said an official. He was also in frequent touch with people arrested by Mumbai Police for cybercrimes. He hadn’t met them personally but chatted with them in twitter groups.
As for the use of Gurmukhi script in his tweets, Bishnoi said he chose it because he found it made more impact than Devanagri or Roman scripts," said an official.
Bishnoi, sources said, tried to harm himself twice in custody. "However, his medical examination has been conducted and he is stable and unharmed. We suspect he wants to delay the investigation. Due care is being taken of him while in custody" said a police officer.
The cops also confirmed that Bishnoi was operating the Twitter account belonging to Shweta Singh, arrested earlier in the Bulli Bai case. TOI had reported on Friday that Bishnoi had disclosed during interrogation that he was the one using the Twitter handle of Singh, the woman arrested by Mumbai Police.
