Mumbai: With the Mumbai Police arresting an 18-year-old girl in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ app controversy, veteran lyricist Javed Akhtar has urged the people to show compassion and forgive the teenager as she recently lost her parents to cancer and Covid-19.
“If “bully bai” was really masterminded by an 18 year old girl who has recently lost her parents to cancer n Corona I think the women or some of them meet her and like kind elders make her understand that why what ever she did was wrong . Show her compassion and forgive her,” he tweeted earlier on Wednesday.
The veteran lyricist’s appeal came a day after the Mumbai Police cyber cell arrested the girl from Uttarakhand in connection with the case.
The girl identified as Shweta Singh had been operating multiple accounts on the app and is thought to be the mastermind behind the controversy, police said.
The parents of Shweta, a Class 10 passout from Uttarakhand, passed away in recent years.
She lost her father, who worked with a manufacturing company that paid the family Rs 10,000 a month, to Covid-19, while her mother succumbed to cancer in 2011.
The family of the 18-year-old, who had plans to pursue engineering at the time, earns approximately Rs 13,000 per month. They also receive Rs 3,000 as part of the Vatsalya Yojana, a scheme of the Uttarakhand government for the Covid-19 orphans.
The Mumbai Police had also arrested a 21-year-old engineering student from Bengaluru in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ app case, which came to the fore earlier on January 1.
This came after the Mumbai Police lodged an FIR following complaints in connection with the ‘Bulli Bai’ app, which targeted scores of Muslim women, including journalists, by uploading their morphed photographs without their consent and claiming they were up for “auction”.