Bulli Bai case: Mumbai Court discharges accused Vishal Jha; says merely following mobile app no offence   

A Mumbai court has closed the case Vishal Sudhirkumar Jha in the Bulli Bai app case in which photographs of over 100 Muslim women were displayed for an auction [Vishal Jha v. State of Maharashtra]

The judicial magistrate at Bandra RT Ingle passed the order on October 6.

The magistrate highlighted the lack of direct involvement of Jha and ruled that merely being in contact with co-accused does not automatically establish liability for their criminal acts. 

“May be the applicant has followed Bullibai App due to his familiarity with the co-accused and contact with them, but, in entire charge-sheet there is no further role of the present applicant which would show that, he either created said App or the help co-accused in creating it,” the judge said. 

The judge also relied on an Allahabad High Court precedent to establish that simply following a page on a website is not a punishable offence.

The case revolves around an application hosted on GitHub that unlawfully displayed photographs of over 100 Muslim women for an intended auction.

Jha and two other accused had previously secured bail on April 12 after the court observed that older co-accused had abused their immaturity. 

This decision marks the first official discharge in the prominent cybercrime investigation.

Jha was facing charges under Sections 153(a) (promoting enmity between different groups), 153(b) (imputations prejudicial to national integration), and 295(a) (deliberate acts intended to outrage religious feelings) alongside Section 67 of the Information Technology Act for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. 

Advocate Aarati Deshmukh for Jha argued for discharge on the grounds that the charge-sheet failed to make out any offence against Jha, as his only alleged action was following the app.

She argued that the investigating officer could not produce evidence demonstrating that Jha shared the application on his Twitter account as claimed.

The court accepted the arguments and discharged him from all charges.

Additional Public Prosecutor Kalpana Hire appeared for State.

[Read order]