New Delhi: A team of Mumbai Police cyber cell Thursday arrested three men from Haryana for allegedly making derogatory and sexually explicit remarks against women on the audio chat app Clubhouse.
Those arrested are 19-year-old Akash Suyal from Karnal, who owns Clubhouse ID titled ‘Kira XD’, 21-year-old Jaishnav Kakkar from Faridabad (ID Jaishnav), and 22-year-old Yash Parashar (multiple IDs), sources said.
While Suyal is an ‘orphan’ intermediate graduate, Kakkar is a BCom student and Parashar is a law student with ‘political background’, sources said. A fourth accused in the case, Ritesh Jha, is ‘absconding’, sources added. Jha had allegedly made the controversial YouTube channel, ‘Liberal Doge’, last year.
All three arrested were either participants, speakers or moderators of the two Clubhouse rooms in question — “Muslim gals are more beautiful than Hindu gals” and “Girls don’t have the privilege to marry upper caste boys” — and made rape threats and communal statements, said sources in Mumbai Police.
The two Clubhouse rooms were created Monday — the first around 3 pm and the second around 7:30 pm, sources said.
A video recording of the chatroom, posted on Twitter, showed around 18-20 participants discussing “pink private parts of Muslim women”, “Babri Masjid”, “ghar wapsi (conversion to Hinduism)” and “Oedipus complex”, among other lewd, Islamophobic and sexist remarks.
The Mumbai Police action came after an FIR was registered late Wednesday by a 33-year-old Hindu woman. ThePrint has accessed a copy of the FIR.
In her complaint, she said these two Clubhouse rooms ‘auctioned’ her and other women. Moreover, two more similar Clubhouse rooms were created last year, where she and four other women were ‘auctioned’ by a group of men, her complaint said. Of the previous two Clubhouse rooms, the first was created around 27 October and the other a month later, on 27 November.
The owners of Clubhouse IDs ‘Sallos’, ‘Bismillah’ and ‘Harsh’, also found in the Monday Clubhouse rooms, are yet to be identified, sources added.
Also read: Bulli Bai app and the descent of India’s educated youth into using tech for anti-Muslim hate
Who are the 3 arrested?
Akash Suyal, who owns the Kira XD ID, spoke to ThePrint earlier. He appeared to be a moderator of the first group and was also active in the second.
“Kira XD, was part of both groups. He made the oedipal remarks about having Muslim mother (first group) and also issued rape threats to a minor (second group),” a source said, adding that Suyal told the police that he did all this because he “lost his father to a heart attack six months ago”.
“The videos are lagged due to internet glitch so it appeared that Kira had spoken about having a sexual relationship with a Muslim woman (abusive language used) was equivalent, in terms of good deeds, to ‘building seven mandirs’, but it was actually Jaishav. The voice has been verified,” the source said. His father has political affiliations.
Jaishav is a 1st year Bcom student, who had earlier told ThePrint that he made the comments for “dark humour”.
Yash Parashar hails from a “political background” in Faridabad, sources said.
According to the police, the 22-year-old law student’s used the Clubhouse IDs that have been named in the FIR — ‘Boss Brahmin’, ‘Sher Singh ka Papa’, ‘Biker gang5’ and ‘Yash Parashar’ — to target and auction some women last year too. The bio of the profiles include details like ‘potential rapist’, among other abusive and sexist content. The first Clubhouse room in October was created after this.
“He used the IDs — Pardhan @haryana_aala among some others — to target women in both the groups,” the source said.
‘Eid Special’, Sulli Deals & Bulli Bai
The FIR also mentioned Ritesh Jha, who allegedly used multiple IDs — ‘uwu’, ‘secular doge’, ‘liberal doge’, and ‘Ritesh Jha’ — on Clubhouse to target the women last year.
Jha was the man allegedly behind the YouTube LIVE channel called ‘Liberal Doge’ created in May last year. The channel carried pictures of Pakistani women in an abusive and sexualised video. The video was called ‘Eid Special’. It was after this video emerged that Muslim women were ‘auctioned’ on Twitter, followed by the controversial Sulli Deals app in July.
“They used abusive language, vile sexist, casteist slurs and created the chat rooms because we spoke against Sulli Deals, oppression against Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims. Auctioned our body parts,” the complainant told ThePrint Wednesday.
The Delhi Police had earlier registered an FIR Tuesday following outrage and the Delhi Commision of Women’s letter on the matter, after a partial screen recording of the first Clubhouse group went viral.
A quote attributed to the police complaint in an earlier version of the report was not from the police complaint but part of the complainant’s comment to ThePrint.
(Edited by Amit Upadhyaya)
Also read: Bulli Bai ‘mastermind’ part of Sulli Deals too, made Muslim alias to mislead: Delhi Police