Police in Delhi on Thursday arrested the alleged main conspirator and creator of the app "Bulli Bai", Neeraj Bishnoi, in his hometown in the Indian state of Assam for putting hundreds of Muslim women up for an online "auction".
Law enforcement said the 20-year-old Bishnoi was also the main Twitter account holder of the app which has been suspended by the micro-blogging site.
Bishnoi is reportedly a second-year engineering student at an institute based in the city of Bhopal in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He is to be brought to Delhi for further questioning.
A total of four arrests have been made so far in the "Bulli Bai" app case.
The Mumbai Cyber Police earlier arrested an engineering student named Vishal Kumar Jha, 21, from Karnataka's Bengaluru, a 19-year-old girl called Shweta Singh, and a science student named Mayank Rawal, 21, from the state of Uttarakhand.
The accused had allegedly sourced the photographs and published them on the app without the individuals' permission, in an apparent attempt to target and harass Muslim women.
"Bulli Bai" appears to be a clone of a similar app called "Sulli Deals", that sparked an uproar in July 2021 after photos of dozens of Muslim women were uploaded for auction as the "deal of the day".
"Sulli" and "Bulli" are derogatory words used by some Hindus to describe Muslim women.
In the case of "Bulli Bai", several police complaints have been filed in three different states — Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Telangana, as well as in the Union Territory of Delhi.
The case is being investigated by both Mumbai Police's cybersecurity team and Delhi's Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSCO) unit which is also probing the "Sulli Deals" case.