With regards to the recent “Bulli bai app” in which Indian Muslim women were “auctioned off” online, it has emerged that the accused in the case are Shweta Singh an 18-year-old from Uttarakhand, Vishal Jha, a 21-year-old studying in Bangalore, and Mayank Rawal, also a resident of Uttarakhand.
While there is no certainty on to what extent these three individuals were involved in the “auction”, it is worth noting that the auction itself was derogatory and offensive to Muslim women as it bore proof to an Islamophobic and sexist mentality plaguing the country.
While the act itself received vehement condemnation, the accused haven’t been met with severe criticism from prominent faces from the sub-continent. For instance, poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar took to his Twitter profile and tweeted, “If Bulli Bai app mastermind is an 18-year-old, Shweta Singh who recently lost her parents cancer and COVID-19, asked the victims of Bulli Bai auction to meet the young girl and make her understand that why whatever she did was wrong.”
Akhtar further asked the victims to show the 18-year-old compassion and forgive her.
This stirred a massive outrage on the internet. Several women targetted by the Bulli Bai auction took to Twitter and asked Javed Akhtar to not impart lectures on compassion and forgiveness.
As it should be obvious, the only opinion worth listening to in the entire scandal is that of the women who were indecently auctioned off.
Following are the reactions from the targetted women in Bulli Bai auction:
Journalist Rahul Kanwal took to his Twitter profile and tweeted that an 18-year-old girl is quite an exceptional and an unexpected mastermind and he further sympathised with her personal loss and financial distress.
One of the women dealing with the aftermath of the auction, Sidrah took to her Twitter profile and asked Kanwal to ‘stop exceptionalising this criminality’.
Amid this stirring outrage of victims, Bollywood actor Swara Bhaskar tweeted and drew parallel of terrorist Ajmal Kasab and accused Shweta Singh and said, Ajmal Kasab who killed innocent people in the Mumbai Attacks of 2008. He was in his twenties and came from crippling poverty.
Targetting the right-wing brigade in the country she questions if the stalwarts of Godi Media think the context justifies the crime.