Mumbai Police arrest three over Clubhouse hate chats

The cyber cell of Mumbai police on Friday arrested three men from Haryana for making objectionable and abusive comments against Muslim women on an audio chat application, Clubhouse, officials said.

According to the police, two of the accused - Jaishnav Kakkar (21) and Yash Parashar (22) - were arrested from Faridabad, while the third one, identified as Akash Suyal (19), was nabbed from Karnal. All arrests were made on Thursday night. Parashar is a law student, Kakkar is studying BCom while Suyal has completed Class 12, police said, adding that all three were arrested from their native places in Haryana.

Mumbai Police commissioner Hemant Nagrale confirmed the breakthrough in the Clubhouse case. Police said a complaint was lodged on January 19 by a woman at the Cyber police station, following which a first information report (FIR) was registered. A video of the Clubhouse group’s vulgar and objectionable conversations was shared on various social media platforms.

“In her complaint, the woman claimed that the participants of the Clubhouse chats had used objectionable remarks against women. She also complained that her photographs as well as those of her friend were used in the chat room on October 27 and November 27 last year during a discussion about women,” Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of police (crime) said.

“The three accused are likely to be brought to Mumbai on Saturday on a transit remand. We will produce them before a local court and seek their remand for further investigation,” said Bharambe.

A crime branch official said that two chat rooms were created in the Clubhouse app, where participants were making derogatory comments about women and using abusive language. “They also talked about auctioning female body parts,” the official added.

Another senior crime branch official said on Friday that a Twitter user by the name of ‘Jaimine’ had published videos of Clubhouse app. Similarly, a video was shared from an Instagram account by the name ‘lotus watch’. These two videos of Clubhouse chat rooms went viral on January 16 and January 19. The moderator of these two groups was using an ID ‘Kira XD’, which was used by Suyal, the official said.

Kakkar was known on Clubhouse by account name @jaishnav and Parashar was known as ‘Sher Singh ka Papa’, ‘Biker gang 5’, ‘pardhan@haryana_aala’, the official added.

Based on the woman’s complaint, the Cyber police registered a case under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 153 (A) (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc), 195 (A) (threatening a person to give false evidence), 354 (A) (sexual harassment), 354 (D) (stalking), 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman), 500 (defamation) and section 67 of IT Act.

The cyber police, through technical investigation, traced the locations of the persons involved in creating the objectionable chatrooms and arrested the accused on Friday. The cyber police said they are also analysing the online activities of the accused.

The Delhi police are also looking into the case.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena leader and Rajya Sabha member Priyanka Chaturvedi on Friday said that after successfully making a breakthrough in the ‘Bulli Bai’ app case, Mumbai cyber police made another breakthrough and arrested accused in the Clubhouse case.

“Kudos @MumbaiPolice, they have got cracking on the Clubhouse chats too and some arrests have been made. Say no to hate. #Clubhouse,” she tweeted.

She told HT that people were discussing “how to rape and exploit women, especially Muslim women” on Clubhouse app.