Indian police have arrested a 21-year-old man for uploading images of and trying to "auction" at least 100 Muslim women on an app, reported BBC News.

Photographs of several prominent Muslim journalists and activists were used on the app without their permission and put on sale in a fake auction, according to the report.

Charges against the man were still unclear, but the police said he was a "close follower" of the app Bulli Bai, which was hosted on web platform GitHub. His identity was not revealed.

The accused is an engineering student and belonged to the city of Bangalore.

Since the issue came to surface, the application has been taken down amid widespread anger and outrage.

This was not the first attempt in India to target minority women. In July last year, an app and website Sulli Deals created at least 80 profiles of Muslim women and described them as "deals of the day".

Sulli is a derogatory Hindi slang term right-wing Hindu trolls use for Muslim women, and bulli is also pejorative, according to the report.

A social media user who was targetted in the latest attack tweeted: "Hi @DelhiPolice. This lot already harassed me by hosting an auction of me and making disgusting lewd comments on me. I had filed an FIR in May with you, but you’ve done absolutely nothing. Now they’re back with this. Good job protecting women. Will you do anything now atleast?"

The list of women on the Bulli Bai app also included a Bollywood actor and the 65-year-old mother of a disappeared Indian student, read the report.

Quratulain Rehbar, a Kashmiri journalist, who had been targetted in the Sulli deals last year, also became the subject of abuse in the latest attempt.

Taking to Twitter, she said: "It's a clear Islamophobia!"