An online hashtag war on Twitter erupted between supporters and opponents of Ritesh Jha, a 23-year old man from Bihar, revealed to be the brain behind 'Liberal Doge'.
Nearly 9,000 tweets were used across both hashtags - #ISupportRiteshJha, tweeted by his supporters, and #ArrestRiteshJha by calling for action against him.
His name appeared as 'Sulli Deals' - an app that shared the personal information of Muslim women online without their consent - came to the fore after it was taken down by GitHub, which served as the apps repository hosting service.
Though Jha is yet to be linked to Sulli Deals, which ran several Telegram channels under the pseudonym 'Liberal Doge' where one could share Islamophobic content. On May 13, there was 'Liberal Doge Livestream' on YouTube, which was initially promoted by the platform as an Eid special, but which put out pictures of Muslim women from India and Pakistan.
Jha's link to Liberal Doge was brought out by an investigation done by Newslaundary. When BOOM reached out to Jha, he decline to comments and did not know anything about Liberal Doge.
Here's how the hashtag war has panned out.
#ArrestRiteshJha
This hashtag generated the most interest of the two, with 6,609 tweets generated for this hashtag spanning three days.
The tweets using hashtags condemned the actions of Jha and called for his arrest.
Of the 6,609 tweets using the hashtag, just above 5,000 were used yesterday, July 12. 1,535 tweets were used today till publishing of this story.
A number of verified accounts also tweeted using this hashtag.
#ISupportRiteshJha
A faction on Twitter also supported Jha, basing this on no connection between him and Sulli Deals being found.
Several users also brought up 'love-jihad' related issues, tweeting that supporters of Jha's arrest are vocal against the assault on the image of Muslim women, but not against that of Hindu women.
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Such tweets can be found below.
The tweets however, are fewer when compared to the camp supporting Jha's arrest.
There were only 2,109 tweets under this hashtag across two days.
