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| Hina Khan is a commercial pilot and is not afraid to express her opinion |
Dozens of Muslim women in India were shocked to learn last Sunday that their names have been added to the list of women for sale online.
Hina Khan, a commercial pilot whose name was added to the list of women for sale, told the BBC that she had been warned about it by a friend via Twitter.
Through this Twitter message, they will be able to see the app and website of 'Sulli Deals' which has published pictures of women and their 'profile' or private information and presented them as 'Deals of the Day'.
The first page of this app had a picture of an unknown woman. On the next two pages, Hina Khan saw pictures of her friends. He saw a picture of himself on the next page.
He told the BBC that he had counted 83 pictures, which could be more.
"They took my picture from Twitter and wrote my 'username' or the name I use on Twitter." This app has been running for 20 days and we didn't know about it. I still get nervous thinking about it.
This app was pretending to be giving them a chance to buy 'Sulli'. Sulli is a defamatory term used by Hindu extremist Muslim women to troll or harass online. There was really no auction. The purpose of this app was nothing but to disgrace and humiliate Muslim women.
Hina Khan said she was targeted only because her religion is Islam. "She is a Muslim woman who is heard and people know her," she said. "They want to silence us."
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| Harassment of Muslim women is not uncommon in India |
GitHub, the web platform on which the app was placed, removed it after receiving complaints. The company said in a statement that "after investigating this activity, we have suspended the accounts of users of this app in violation of our policy."
But this bitter experience has hurt women. All the women whose names were included in this list have an important place in the society and are women of opinion. They include journalists, social activists, artists and researchers. Many of these women have closed their social media accounts and many others say they fear further harassment.
One woman told the BBC Hindi service: "No matter how strong your nerves are, you get upset when your image and personal information are made public."
Many of the women whose details are posted on this app are using social media to call such people lustful and are determined to fight them.
More than a dozen women have formed a group that is helping and assisting each other to lodge complaints with the police, including Hina Khan.
Prominent citizens, social activists and leaders have spoken out against such harassment of women. Police say an investigation has been launched but did not say who was behind the move.
The people who created the app used fake identities, but Hasiba Amin, a social media co-ordinator for the opposition Congress party, blamed the accounts on verbal abuse of Muslims and especially Muslim women. Attacks and those who support right-wing politics.
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| Filed an FIR against harassment of Indian Women |
Hasiba Amin said this is not the first time Muslim women have been targeted in this way. Muslims celebrated Eid-ul-Adha on May 31 this year when a 'Eid Special' was aired on a YouTube channel in which women from India and Pakistan were directly 'auctioned'.
Hina Khan said that in this auction people were bidding for five and ten rupees and they were giving numbers to women keeping in view their body and sexual attraction and were also threatening to rape them.
Hasiba Amin later said that a well-known account tried to auction her off on Twitter that day.
Hina Khan said that many other accounts, one of which was named "Sulli Deals", started abusing her, commenting on her body in very sexual and vulgar language.
She believes that the people who tried to auction her off on Twitter are the ones who put her name on the Sulli Deals app and the YouTube app, which has now been removed from the platform.
Last week, Twitter suspended several accounts, claiming they were behind the app.
Experts say that insulting, humiliating and intimidating women online is very effective in silencing them.
Last week, nearly 200 prominent actors, musicians, journalists and government officials from around the world wrote to the owners of Facebook, Google, TikTok and Twitter to make protecting women a priority.
People from all over the world have written in this open letter that "the Internet is the main crossroads of the 21st century."
"There is debate here, communities are formed, goods are sold and people's reputation is built, but the scale at which online is being misused means that one of the women For the most part, this is not a safe place for Digital Town Square or Central Square.
Amnesty International, in a report on the harassment of women on the Internet in India last year, said that the more a woman speaks, the more likely she is to be targeted. ۔
Just as a black woman is more likely to be harassed in the United States and the United Kingdom, women in India are more likely to be targeted by minorities.
Nazia Iram, a former Amnesty International spokeswoman in India, says there are very few Muslim women in India who are not harassed or targeted on social media.
He said the deliberate targeting of them was an attempt to snatch the mic from educated Muslim women, who give their opinion and speak out against Islam and phobia.
"It's an attempt to silence, defame and take away their place," he said.
Hasiba Amin said the harassers have no fear because they know they will not be caught.
He cited many incidents in which Muslims were persecuted and encouraged by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. In this regard, the BJP ministers defeated the perpetrators of mass murder of Muslims. In addition, a video that went viral last year showed the Information and Broadcasting Minister urging a mob of Hindus to shoot Muslims.
Getting justice can be a difficult and lengthy process for Muslim women whose names are on the list of Sulli Deals. But they are committed to justice. Hina Khan said that if the police did not catch the people who had hired them to sell them, they would go to court. "I will follow him to the end."
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