Delhi Police File FIR Against Creators Of 'Sulli Deals' App That 'Auctioned' Photos Of Muslim Women

The Delhi Police’s Special Cell on Thursday registered a First Information Report against unidentified people for creating an app which auctioned photos of Muslim women.

Representative Image

New Delhi: The Cyber Cell of Delhi Police has registered an FIR against unidentified people for creating the 'Sulli Deals' app, which 'auctioned personal photographs of Muslim women online. The cyber cell has started investigating the matter.

Some unknown people had created an application named 'Sulli Deals' on the popular open-source platform GitHub.

“Sulli” is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslim women. The app, which was uploaded on repository hosting service GitHub, has been taken down by the platform after outrage on social media.

Some miscreants created an open-source website called 'Sulli for Sale', on which information and personal photos of Muslim women's Twitter handles were shared and 'auctioned', and termed it as 'Sulli Deal'.

In this app, pictures, names and Twitter handles of more than 80 Muslim women were shared. On opening this app, each Muslim woman's picture, name and Twitter handle information was being shared with the user.

The information about this app came to the fore when people started writing about it on Twitter writing 'Sulli Deals Of the Day'.

Delhi Police take action after DCW's complaint

Delhi Police's action comes a day after the Delhi Commission for Women took a tough stand in this whole matter. Commission chairperson Swati Maliwal even issued a notice to Delhi Police and termed it as  'serious cyber crime'.

The women's panel has sought a reply from the police by July 12.

"The Delhi Commission for Women has taken suo-moto cognisance on media report of uploading of pictures of many girls on the internet using a platform namely 'GitHub'. It has been reported that photos of hundreds of Muslim women and girls were uploaded by an unidentified group on an app using GitHub - by the name of 'Sulli Deals' - on Sunday, 4 July. Reportedly, Sulli is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslim women," DCW said in its notice issued to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyber Cell, Delhi Police.

The Delhi Police have filed an FIR complaint received by the National Cyber ​​Crime Reporting Portal informed the Delhi Police PRO Chinmoy Biswal.The police have also sent a notice to GitHub. The cyber cell has registered a case under Section 354-A of the IPC on July 7 and the matter is being investigated. So far it is not clear who had put these pictures on the Sulli app. 

Editor's Guild expresses concern

The Editors Guild of India also expressed concern about the misuse of digital and social media platforms to harass women journalists. “This vile attack is symptomatic of underlying misogyny in some sections of the society, especially against Muslim women as well as those who have been outspoken critics of the current government,” the journalists’ body said.

(With inputs from Manoj Verma)