Mumbai Cyber Police made the third arrest in the case with the apprehension of final semester student (BSc Hons) from Uttarakhand early on Wednesday in connection to the ‘Bulli Bai’ app case wherein he tried to deactivate the data and social media accounts. Probe revealed that the accused, Mayank Rawat, 21, made these accounts to instigate people and get followers for the ‘Bulli Bai’ Twitter handle. Rawat, son of an Indian Army personnel posted in J & K, was arrested from Uttarakhand after a team tracked him through the Twitter handle ID and the IP address.
Police said that the main mastermind, Shweta Singh (18) who was arrested from Uttarakhand knew Rawat and the other accused, Vishal Kumar Jha, 21, who were some of the five followers of Bulli Bai handle. The group intended to create communal tension between the communities and used the same to post obscene content and photos of prominent Muslim women. Rawat and Singh will be brought to Mumbai after their transit remand.
The arrests were based on the technical evidence after the team gathered information about the five followers of Bulli Bai handle. Police are yet to ascertain the motive and have not come across any money transactions, said Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale. Police said that Rawat had created his account on Twitter in 2020 and had been communicating with a person with an ID (@giyu@007) the same person (suspected to be from Nepal) who befriended Singh through a virtual medium.
After the case was registered on January 1, Rawat tried to delete his account and post to evade arrest but police managed to retrieve the account and trace his IP address to nab him. Sources claimed that the trio is believed to have been used by someone and made them create the handles in the name of the Sikh community and use it to the target Muslim community.
Meanwhile, police are sifting through Jha's social media accounts to ascertain motive and gather strong evidence to build a case.
