A application created to expose more than a hundred muslim women has generated a strong controversy in India where this Tuesday, January 4, two people have been arrested in relation to the now withdrawn app, between reports of increasing attacks against minorities.
A 21-year-old student was detained and brought before a Mumbai court, showed there NDTV television, and a woman was also arrested as the main accused of creating the app, the western city police said.
“Why am I so disgusted, but not surprised, that it could have been a woman?” The journalist asked on Twitter. Ismat Ara one of dozens of Muslim women whose face appeared on the app. “We have been sold and auctioned online“He added in another message.
Ara filed a complaint on January 1 before the Capital Police, which he shared on Twitter, in which he demanded the opening of an investigation “against a group of unknown people who want to harass and insult Muslim women on social networks and on the internet. ”.
The journalist discovered her face that day in an application, as did dozens of other women belonging to the Muslim minority of the India a religion followed by 14.2% of the country’s inhabitants.
“Your ‘bulli bai’ of the day is @IsmatAraa”, along with a photograph of Ara the now eliminated application pointed out, a term that, as the journalist explained, is “used exclusively against Muslim women” and “with the intention of humiliating and insult ”.
The application has generated outrage in part of the country, and the Minister of Telecommunications, Ashwini Vaishnaw He affirmed last Saturday that the Indian Government is “working” together with the Police of New Delhi and Bombay in the case.
But beyond official statements, numerous human rights organizations have denounced an increase in attacks against religious minorities under the government of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
As Ara pointed out, it is not the first time that an application with images of Muslim women has appeared.
It is a new version of Sulli Deals, a similar platform created in July of last year that “auctioned” dozens of Muslim women with an equally pejorative Hindi term.
Just two weeks ago and during a religious assembly in the northern city of Haridwar, attendees called for the killing of Muslims, an event that caused outrage in the Asian country due to the slowness of the authorities and the Police in acting against the organizers .
The Christian minority, which represents 2.3% of the population according to the last census of 2011, has also recently suffered a wave of attacks, especially in the southern state of Karnataka.
The Popular Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) denounced 39 cases of hate crimes against Christians in the region in December and mentioned that it is drafting a controversial law to prohibit forced conversions, while the Association for the Protection of Civil Rights last year verified 300 cases of violence against christians in 21 states.
Source-larepublica.pe