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Humayun Aziz Sandeela
Having miserably failed in toning down the impact and ramifications of the Khalistan Referendum and to hurt the camaraderie between Sikh and Muslim communities in India and around the globe, Mumbai Police in India has revealed that not only Bulli Bai, but several other social media handles were ostensibly using to drive a wedge between Sikh and Muslim communities.
India seems quite nervy about the Khalistan Referendum, as the tally of votes for the Sikh movement in favour of Khalistan state crossed the 200,000 mark in the latest phase of the referendum held in Hounslow, Slough, Wednesfield and Smethwick across United Kingdom, on the eve of New Year proves the fact that all plans employed by Narendra Modi-led Indian regime to defame Sikhs in general and Pakistan in particular have failed.
The media houses that are mouth pieces of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in a coordinated campaign in the first week of December made tall claims that London Metropolitan Police had cracked down and shut the Khalistan Referendum voting by Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), the voting for the referendum continues with its seven phases already being completed. As reported by The News International, Indian media in a coordinated campaign claimed that Scotland Yard had raided SFJ’s London office and recovered fake machines and papers and that a Pakistani man had been arrested too but the London police immediately clarified that no raid had carried out and no arrest was made.
All the media hype created by the India turned out to be nothing but a farce, which failed to dissuade the Sikh Diaspora in United Kingdom to participate in the voting process and figure of 20,000 voters that had turned up for the New Year eve voting in Hounslow, Slough, Wednesfield and Smethwick proves the fact that Indian media propaganda fell flat on its face.
Earlier on December 10th, more than 6000 people showed up to vote in Geneva, Switzerland to kickstart the European Phase of Khalistan Referendum. According to Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), the organizers of Khalistan Referendum, voting in Slough was organized on the request of Sikh community members from Slough who approached the Punjab Referendum Commission (PRC) – the independent panel of election experts supervising and overseeing the Khalistan Referendum – asking for setting up of the polling station in the neighborhood to give an opportunity to the Sikhs of the area who could not vote thus far.
When the mainstream media failed to fulfill the evil designs of the desperate Indian government, something was needed to be done and it came through use of social media to create a wedge between Sikhs and Muslims.
What seems like another dirty trick to achieve its nefarious designs, as reported by Clarion India, investigations by Mumbai Police in India revealed that not only Bulli Bai, but several other handles were used on social media platforms, ostensibly intended to drive a wedge between Sikh and Muslim communities.
Quoting Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale, Clarion India said that three persons including, a 21-year-old old techie, Vishal Kumar Jha, a second-year civil engineering student from Dayanand Sagar College of Engineering in Bengaluru, India, an 18-year-old girl, Shweta Anant Singh, from Rudrapur, Uttarakhand, who’s said to be the mastermind, and Mayank Pradeep Singh Rawat, 21, also from the same state have been arrested so far and the probe has shown other social media handles that were deployed to spread hate messages.
They are: @Bullibai_, @Sage0x11, @hmmaachaniceoki, @jatkhalsa, @jatkhalsa7, @Sikh_Khalsa11, @wannabesigmaf, etc., on micro-blogging platform Twitter.
The investigations by Mumbai Police pointed out that six months ago, using the open-source software platform GitHub, the app Sulli Bai was created on which pictures of Muslim women were posted, and a similar modus operandi was carried out with the Bulli Bai app. All these Twitter handles were purportedly linked to the Sikh community and as per the information available on @Bullibai, the KSF Khalsa Sikh Force had created the app Bulli Bai, the police said.
The major aim behind this derogatory campaign was to convey that one Khalsa Supremacist was a ‘follower’ of Bulli Bai app, as per the investigations. Deploying his technical expertise, Jha managed to conceal his identity to a great extent, and also claimed through @Khalsasupremacist that he was living in Canada, kept changing his name frequently, besides running a YouTube channel, Tavasya Vats, claimed the police, as reported by Clarion India.
After the latest voting in the referendum, Sikhs For Justice General Counsel Gurpatwant Singh Pannun pointed out what Sikhs want through the voting and that is liberation of Punjab from Indian occupation.
Gurpatwant Singh Pannun’s indication that Indian government could go to any extent to target the Sikh leaders and especially those associated with the Khalistan referendum and Khalistan movement has also proven by the fact that after its failure in persuading the UK and US governments from dissuading the Sikhs from the referendum, it has now reverted to dirty old tricks of creating a wedge between the followers of the two religions, Muslims and Sikhs on frivolous grounds and using few techies to launch a derogatory campaign against Muslim women to defame Sikhs.
These young techies listed several prominent Indian Muslim women for an auction through a mobile phone app “Bulli Bai” just seven months after “Sulli Deals”, another similar app was found to be launched with same objective.
In both apps, the women’s photographs, sometimes doctored, had also been uploaded with their ‘auction’ profiles. These Muslim women had a strong presence on Twitter, including journalists. In what appears a clear hand of far-right individuals or groups behind these apps, the offensive language in both apps is usually associated with Hindutva-pushing social media trolls, Twitter handles reportedly associated with the new app and some individual handles appeared to be promoting Sikh communal causes. However, prominent Sikh journalists and politicians have suggested that this is a false-flag attempt by “fascist forces” to “put a wedge between Sikhs and Muslims”.
India has tried to portray Sikhs as terrorists but the whole world is witness to the fact that Sikhs are peaceful and democratic people who believe in ballots, not bullets, and that’s what frightens India.
