Bulli Bai: Accused Vishal Kumar tests positive for COVID, remanded to judicial custody till January 24

Bangalore based student Vishal Sudhirkumar Jha, the first person to be arrested in the Bull Bai case, has contracted COVID-19 and was remanded to judicial custody today..A Mumbai court passed the order remanding Jha to judicial custody till January 24. He was in police custody until today.Jha was detained from Bangalore on January 3, 2021 and was first produced before the Metropolitan Magistrate Court at Bandra on January 4, 2021.He had then been remanded to police custody until today..During the hearing today, the Magistrate was informed that Vishal Jha has tested COVID positive and has been admitted to the Kalina quarantine centre for treatment. The police filed an application before the Magistrate stating that once Jha is released from quarantine he should be remanded back to police custody as they have some more investigation and interrogation to complete with him.They said they still had to complete the investigation of the electronic devices which had been seized from him and also wanted to further probe any more fake social media accounts and ProtonMail that may have been used for communication. The Court then proceeded to remand him to judicial custody. Meanwhile, the police custody of two other accused, Uttarakhand natives Shweta Singh and Mayank Rawat was extended till January 14. The police claimed they wanted to check for any possible connections with the Sulli deals case which is being investigated by the Delhi police. They claimed that the investigation was taking longer as it was difficult to trace the electronic evidence due to the measures taken by the accused to hide their identities..The case has its genesis in an app 'Bulli bai' which appeared on open source platform GitHub.The app put out details of more than 100 prominent Muslim women allowing users to participate in an 'auction' of those women.It triggered an outrage and based on complaints by women who had been targeted by the app, the cyber cell of Mumbai police registered an FIR on January 1, 2022.The FIR was registered against relevant Twitter handles and developer of Bulli Bai for offences under Sections 153A (promoting enmity on grounds of religion etc), 153B (imputations prejudicial to national-integration), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 354D (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 500 (criminal defamation) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of Information Technology Act..Meanwhile, a Delhi court had last week remanded Neeraj Bishnoi, the alleged “main conspirator” and creator of "Bulli Bai” on GitHub, to seven days of police custody.This was in a separate FIR registered by the Delhi Police.

Bulli Bai: Accused Vishal Kumar tests positive for COVID, remanded to judicial custody till January 24

Neha Joshi

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