The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes, Wednesday condemned the surfacing of a hate app in India on which doctored photographs of hundreds of Muslim women were uploaded for “auction” and said such incidents need to be prosecuted as soon as they occur.

In a tweet Tuesday evening, Varennes said, “Minority Muslim women in India are harassed and ‘sold’ in social media apps, #SulliDeals, a form of hate speech, must be condemned and prosecuted as soon as they occur. All Human Rights of minorities need to be fully and equally protected.”

This comes after Delhi Police arrested a man, 26-year-old Aumkareshwar Thakur, from Indore in Madhya Pradesh. Thakur is believed to be the creator of the hate app which surfaced in July last year in which hundreds of Indian Muslim women, including journalists and activists, were put up for “auction”. This was the first arrest made in the case.

Thakur’s arrest came soon after the arrest of 21-year-old second-year engineering student, Neeraj Bishnoi from Jorhat in Assam. Bishnoi is the creator of a similar app that surfaced on January 1 on GitHub, the same online platform used to make the previous app, and like the former, was used for “auctioning” Muslim women with doctored photographs.

(SAM)