The Chairperson of Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), Swati Maliwal informed that the DCW has issued a notice to Delhi Police after pictures of Muslim women including journalists, activists and researchers were uploaded on an app without their consent.
Issued Notice to Police on a very serious matter of cyber crime where pictures of several Muslim women were displayed online without their consent and termed as ‘Sulli Deal of the day’. FIR should be registered and strong action should be taken. #SulliDeals pic.twitter.com/MyvKGTsvJ1
— Swati Maliwal (@SwatiJaiHind) July 7, 2021
On Sunday, a GitHub app called “Sulli Deal” uploaded the pictures of hundreds of Muslim women. “Sulli” or “Sulla” are pejorative and derogatory slangs used to refer to Muslims. The app was created on GitHub, an IT service management company, a hosting platform.
The notice added that a suo motu cognizance has been taken while asking the Delhi Police to provide a First Information Report (FIR) copy along with a detailed report on the action taken related to matter by 14th July.
Furthermore, it pointed out that many women ended up leaving social media platforms after the circulation of their images.
The app described itself as a “community driven open source project” and targeted mostly Indian Muslim women including journalists, activists, researchers, analysts and artists. The unidentified group through the app put the women “on sale” and labelled them as “Sulli deal of the day.”
According to The Quint, the Chief Operating Officer of GitHub had confirmed on Twitter that the app had been taken down but no formal statement was issued.