The youngest accused, Shweta Singh, 19, was denied bail in the Bulli Bai app case Kumari Shweta Singh vs State of Maharashtra,by the Mumbai Sessions Court on Friday.
Session Extensions Judge SJ Gharat stated that the greater interests of society must be considered, and that evidence indicated that the accused targeted women from a specific community.
“The record demonstrates active participation in the propagation and dissemination of information/data on women in a specific community. They also tried to make the Sikh community a target for the criminal conduct. The general welfare of society is at risk. As a result, the accused’s request for bail cannot be granted at this time “According to the Court.
It also claimed that Shweta, with the objective of defaming the Sikh community, created phoney twitter accounts with Sikh names in order to deceive the people.
“The offender and his co-accused were found guilty of defaming womanhood. Furthermore, they attempted to represent that the act was carried out by the Sikh community by changing their Twitter account .” “The Court took notice of this.
Shweta said she had been wrongly charged in the case. She said that she had cooperated with the authorities, that her equipment and account had already been taken, and that there was nothing more she could do.
She even stated that her detention will cause problems in her marriage.
She emphasised that she had not made any derogatory statements when it came to the offence. She said that simply tagging a photo and tweeting isn’t unlawful.
She also stated that she merely joined the planned Twitter group as a friend and that her right to free speech was being violated.
Her final point was that incarceration for a crime punishable by a sentence of less than seven years would be regarded a pre-judicial sentence.
While objecting to Shweta’s bid for bail, the prosecution informed the Court that she had communicated with the other accused in the case using the social media app Instagram. She was accused of being a frequent social media user who shared obscene material.
The prosecution claimed that Shweta was a member of the chat group “Trad Mahasabha,” and that Neeraj Bishnoi constructed the app after talks in the group on the open-source website GitHub.
“The investigation is still going on.” At this point, the accused’s involvement cannot be separated from the rest of the accused. “If the accused is given release at this point, the risk of tampering with evidence cannot be ruled out,” the Court observed. The Mumbai police have already requested custody of Bishnoi from the Delhi police who apprehended him.
The bail request was thus denied, with the Court noting that documents revealed the accused’s active involvement in disseminating information about women from a particular community.
An app named ‘Bulli Bai,’ which was developed on the open-source website GitHub and publicised data on over 100 Muslim women for anybody to buy on in a ‘auction,’ provoked the case.
The defendant, along with two others, were arrested by the Mumbai Police Cyber Cell after a first information report (FIR) was filed on January 1 against relevant Twitter accounts and the creator of Bulli Bai for crimes under the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act based on complaints from women targeted by the app.
