A case has been registered by the Cyber Cell of the Delhi Police after it received a complaint about an unidentified group uploading photos of Muslim women on an app, police said on Thursday

The Delhi Commission for Women had issued a notice to the Delhi Police and sought a detailed action taken report in the matter. Delhi Police PRO, Chinmoy Biswal, said, “Acting on a complaint received on the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal regarding ‘Sulli Deals’ mobile application, a case under section 354-A of the Indian Penal Code has been registered on Wednesday and investigation taken up.”

The now defunct site ‘Sulli Deals” as it was known, was noticed on Sunday, when users on Twitter posted about their images being shared without their consent. Owners of the website are not known, however GitHub, which was hosting the website took it down on Monday.

The primary motive of the website seems to have been to target and harass Muslim women, ‘Sulli’ is a derogatory slang for Muslim women. The “community driven open source project” , as was claimed by the website, profiled Muslim women journalists, analysts, activists and researchers and put them up “for auction”.

Chinmoy Biswal, the Delhi Police PRO  said notices have been sent to ‘GitHub’ app to share the relevant details. The notice issued to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Cyber Cell, Delhi Police had said, “The Delhi Commission for Women has taken suo-moto cognisance on media report of uploading of pictures of many girls on internet using a platform namely ‘GitHub’.

“It has been reported that photos of hundreds of Muslim women and girls were uploaded by an unidentified group on an app using GitHub by the name of ‘Sulli Deals’ on Sunday, July 4. Reportedly, Sulli is a derogatory term used to refer to Muslim women.”.

According to media reports, the app came to light when people started sharing their pictures with the term ‘Sulli deal of the day’ on Twitter, the panel had said. “Subsequently, many women had to leave social media platforms after their images got circulated. This is a very serious matter and constitutes cyber crime,” the DCW had said.