NEW DELHI – Nearly a hundred Muslim women have been put “on auction” on an online App named “Sulli deals”. The women who have been profiled are mostly journalists, activists, analysts, artists and researchers. This is not the first time that Muslim women have been targeted in an organized manner on social media. Two months back, a YouTube channel shared pictures of Pakistani women in an abusive and sexualised video.

This time miscreants have used an App of US-based online hosting platform GitHub. They have made App ‘Sulli Deal’ on GitHub and mentioned the Twitter handles of Muslim women in the App under “Deal of the day”.

Sulli is a derogatory term which is used for Muslim women.

There are four handles who have accepted that they have come up with the ‘Sulli Deal’. Two of these handles have been suspended while two are still working.

 

This has created a lot of outrage on Twitter after the Muslim women expressed their anguish and disgust over the harassment.

Journalist Fatima Khan, whose handle is also mentioned on the App, said that she shivered when somebody sent the screenshot of her photo appearing on sulli deal.

 

Another victim Afreen Fatima expressed her anger in a series of tweets and criticized Twitter for allowing such a thing on its platform.

 

Another victim also expressed her disgust at what was happening to her.

 

AIMIM Chief Asaduddin Owaisi expressed his solidarity with the Muslim women and asked RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat who have radicalized these harassers.

 

The App has been taken down after it was reported by many people and the authorities at GitHub were informed about the misuse of their platform.

Two complaints were also filed in the matter. A Mumbai-based lawyer Saif Aalam filed a complaint at a police station on behalf of Fatima Zohra.

 

Team Saath, a Twitter handle which works for cleaning the social media platform of hate, also filed a cyber-crime complaint and asked the Delhi Police to take action.

 

The online harassment has forced some of the women to keep away from social media or remove their profile pictures from the platform. They are disappointed that such harassment is happening one after another but the National Commission for Women, the police and the government did not take action against them. Even the social media platforms allowed the harassers to do what they want.

This story first appeared on clarionindia.net