Calling it a ‘serious matter of cyber-crime’, Delhi Commission for Women’s ( DCW) issued a notice to Delhi Police regarding the ongoing ‘Sulli Deals’ app controversy where photos of Muslim women were used in a derogatory manner without their consent.
On July 7, DCW issued a notice to the Delhi Police and has sought a response by July 12. It has asked for a copy of the FIR registered, details of the accused, and a report on the actions.
According to a report in The Quint, GitHub is a repository hosting platform that acted as a facilitator to this auctioning app. The auctioning app named ‘Sulli Deals’ was created and used on Github. On July 4, hundreds of photos of Muslim women were uploaded by an unidentified group by the name of ‘Sulli Deals’.
‘Sulla’ or ‘Sulli’ is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslims.
The app came to light when people started sharing their ‘deal of the day’ on Twitter.
Hana Mohsin Khan, a pilot by profession and one of the targeted women in the app explains how his app works, “Once opened, the app would ask the user to click on ‘Find your sulli deal of the day’. It would then randomly display a photo of a Muslim woman as your ‘sulli deal of the day’ – the photo most likely sourced from their social media account. I was shocked to see my face being right there, displayed as the deal of the day,” she said to the Quint.
The auctioning app has also targeted journalists belonging to the Muslim community.
One of the targeted women was journalist Fatima Khan, who had reported extensively on the North East Delhi riots of 2020.
She is a senior correspondent with The Print. Khan tweeted, “How is this acceptable? What will be the punishment, if any, meted out to the people who made this list? Muslim men are lynched, Muslim women are harassed and sold online. When will this end?”
Expressing its concerns The Editors Guild said, “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.”
It further added, “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 app has been taken down by the platform after outrage on social media.
Meanwhile, Pilot Hana Mohsin Khan has filed an FIR in the case, for putting women “on-sale”.
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