Arrested Bulli Bai App Creator Tried To Kill Himself: Delhi Police

Neeraj Bishnoi, the main accused in the Bulli Bai app used by right-wing extremists to 'auction' Muslim women - has threatened to kill himself in Delhi police custody, informed DCP of Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) special cell KPS Malhotra.

The accused has twice tried to harm himself, said the police.

"The accused has confessed that he knows the creators of 'Sulli Deal', the app where Muslim women were auctioned. He has also accepted that he has access to the user account of Sweta Singh, who has been arrested by Mumbai police", said Mr Malhotra.

Neeraj, 21, and a second-year BTech student from an institute in Bhopal, was arrested by Delhi Police from Assam's Jorhat district this week. Officials told NDTV they had recovered the device used to create the app that was hosted on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned software-sharing platform. The app itself has now been deleted, after GitHub initially only blocked it.

The 'Bulli Bai' app was a clone of 'Sulli Deals'. 'Sulli' is a derogatory slang word used by the right-wing against Muslim women in India.

He is the fourth person to be arrested in connection with the 'Bulli Bai' app, following those of Mayank Rawal, 21; Shweta Singh; and Vishal Kumar Jha.

He is "stable and unharmed", the officer said, adding that the suicide threat may be due to his mental condition or maybe he wants to delay the investigation.

"He had further disclosed that he was in touch with the persons arrested by Mumbai Police in the virtual world and used to chat through Twitter group chats. He had never met those persons and even did not have their contact numbers. He had disclosed that he was using the Twitter account of the girl Shweta arrested by Mumbai Police", said DCP Malhotra.

The police, during its investigation, found that Neeraj Bishnoi is "habitual of hacking, defacing the websites and learning the same since he was 15 years old".

"Previously he had hacked/defaced the various websites of schools and universities of India as well as of Pakistan. His claims of hacking the websites related to schools are being verified from the concerned quarters", said top sources.

On the question of Neeraj being in touch with the creator of the Sulli Deals app, DCP Malhotra said, "Further technical analysis is being done to identify the culprit. Forensic examination of the technical devices is underway."

"He (Neeraj) said that he had chosen the Gurmukhi script in the crime as he found the same to be more impactful than the Devanagari script", said Police on Friday.