On Monday, March 28, a Delhi court granted bail to the alleged developer of the auction app ‘Sulli Deals,’ according to the Deccan Herald.
Pankaj Kumar, the chief metropolitan magistrate of the Patiala House court, granted bail to Aumkareshwar Thakur (26), noting that he was a “first-time offender” and that “prolonged detention could be damaging to his general well-being.”
The responses of several intermediaries as well as the Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) are awaited in the case and since Thakur cannot possibly influence the results of the FSL report, the awaited responses cannot be grounds to deny him bail.
The accused has roots in the community and is not a flight risk, the court order said, according to the Deccan Herald report. As such, Thakur was granted bail subject to the furnishing of a Rs 50,000 bond with conditions.
Sulli Deals, hosted on GitHub, was an app that staged ‘auctions’ for Muslim women by using doctored images of them without their consent, accompanied with derogatory remarks. It had surfaced in July, 2021, and the Delhi police had registered a first information report (FIR) on July 8 that year under Indian Penal Code (IPC) Section 345A (sexual harassment).
Thakur, a resident of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, was arrested by Delhi police from his residence on January 9 this year.
Thakur’s arrest had come after another app, ‘Bulli Bai’, had surfaced in January this year, which bore a striking resemblance to ‘Sulli Deals’ and also featured staged auctions of prominent Muslim women, along with sharing manipulated images of them without their consent.
The Chenab Times News Desk