India: Police arrest 3 over fake auction of Muslim women

Mumbai police charged two 21-year-old men and a 19-year-old woman over a website which listed more than a 100 prominent Muslim women as being for sale, police said Wednesday.

The app, hosted on US coding platform GitHub, was named Bulli Bai — a vulgar term which is sometimes used against Muslim women. Users could bid on journalists, activists, film stars, and artists, with photos and names displayed as "Bulli Bai of the Day." Pakistani activist and Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai was also put on a mock auction, as was the 65-year-old mother of Najeeb Ahmed, a Muslim university student who disappeared under suspicious circumstances in 2016.

The website was taken down after several women posted about it on social media after finding their own photos.

The situation for Muslim women in India

Investigative journalist Ismat Ara, whose name and photo were also listed on the portal, said it aimed to "create a feeling of fear and shame in my mind, as well as in the minds of women in general" in her complaint to the police.

"It is indeed disappointing to see the impunity with which such hate mongers continue to target Muslim women," she added.

This is the second time in less than six months that Muslim women were targeted in this way in India. In July 2021,a similar Github platform under a different name put up Muslim women for fake auctions. This platform offered "sulli" deals of the day, using a different slur for Muslim women. It was not clear if the suspects arrested on Tuesday were behind the older app.

Hana Mohsin Khan, an airline pilot with over 12,000 Twitter followers, told DW at the time that most of the victims were "vocal women, you know, people who are talking on the internet or on Twitter, and they're educated women."

India has seen a rise in Hindu nationalism since conservative Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into power in 2014, with mob violence against Muslims growing more common. Last month, Indian police said they were investigating an event where a Hindu religious leader apparently called for mass killings of Muslims in the country.

dj/rt (AP, Reuters)