“Educated upper-caste Hindus” arrested for fake Sikh anti-Muslim paedophilic abuse

Three people were arrested in India this week for running social media accounts acting Sikh whilst advocating the abuse – including paedophilia – of Muslim women.

Shweta Singh (18) and Mayank Rawal (21) of Uttarakhand and Vishal Kumar Jha (21) of Bengaluru were arrested for using accounts with names such as “Khalsa Supremacist”, “Khalsa Warrior” and more whilst placing Muslim women up for “auction” on an app called “Bulli Bai”, which is viewed as a dark-web tool used for criminal or degenerate purposes. Dozens of real Muslim women, including respected figures such as activist Malala Yousafazi, had their pictures placed on the app listing them “for sale”. Khalsa is the term for the collective army of Amritdhari (initiated) Sikhs.

Along with the names of the accounts, hashtags such as #FreeJaggiNow were used to feign a genuine Sikh appearance, in reference to the British Sikh political prisoner Sikhs across the world are campaigning for. Posts about sexually abusing children caused a huge outcry, leading to big pushes for an investigation into the accounts, ending with Mumbai police making the arrests this week. Some journalists are describing the culprits caught behind the accounts as “Educated upper-caste Hindus” who used their IT skills to try to create conflict between Sikhs and Muslims, for Hindutva (Hindu extremist) Indian nationalist purposes. The accounts even used Punjabi and GurMukhi (Guru’s script- the language of Sikh scripture). Despite the fact even the police mentioned that the fake Sikh identity was part of the guise of the culprits behind the accounts, this has not been mentioned in articles about the issue by Al Jazeera and BBC.

The posts have also been seen on social media accounts like Twitter, prompting questions of the American company and their policing of Hindutva terrorism on the site. Previously, the Sikh Press Association were completely ignored by Twitter when raising the issue of pro-Indian nationalist accounts sexualising images of real Sikh dastaar (Sikh turban) wearing women, including children. Similar accounts were removed quicker on Instagram.

Many have pointed out such hateful campaigns – including those specifically trying to “sell” Muslim women – have been running for years. The news follows a recent report by the Centre of Information Resilience which uncovered networks of fake Sikh pro-India accounts, often used to demonise the Khalistan (free Sikh homeland) movement.

The ongoing discoveries of such fake Sikh profiles tarnishing the community’s image and working for the benefit of an Indian nationalist agenda will not surprise many Sikhs, who have been speaking about this issue for decades.