Zubair remanded to 4-day police custody over tweet
HT Correspondent
NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Tuesday extended Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair’s police custody by four days over a case it registered a day before for an allegedly objectionable tweet he posted in 2018.
Chief metropolitan magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria pronounced the order, concurring with the prosecution’s claim that Zubair was non-cooperative during interrogation and has to be taken to Bengaluru to recover a mobile phone and laptop. Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for Zubair, contended that the question of the devices was not connected to the case since the appearance was in connection with a different case.
Grover also contended that an image in the purportedly objectionable was a screenshot from a 1983 Hindi movie Kissi Se Na Kehna. “This image is available in many tweets. This image is from a film of Hrishikesh Mukherjee — Kissi Se Na Kehna. In the film, it is a newly married couple and they go to the hotel. This image which is being shown as a reason for arresting somebody is from a Hindi cinema,” she said.
The court, however, rejected the submission.
Zubair, who recently flagged controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed by suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, was arrested by the Delhi Police on Monday. He was produced before a duty magistrate later in the night and was sent to one-day police custody initially.
He has been booked for offences under sections 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups) and 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Seeking a five-day extension of Zubair’s custody, the police told the court that he was following a trend where he used religious tweets to gather followers.
“This was a deliberate effort on his part to create social disharmony and hurt religious feelings,” the police said. They also said Zubair deliberately deleted apps and other material from his phone.
The case against Zubair is based on a complaint from a Twitter handle, Hanuman Bhakt, alleging that Zubair tweeted a questionable image with the intention to deliberately insult a Hindu deity. The handle had just one tweet. Late on Tuesday night, the handle could not be found.
Grover seized on the fact to contend that the complaint was part of an attempt to harass her client for challenging the ruling dispensation as a journalist and factchecker. She pointed out that many people shared that image. “My client is being targeted for his work. He may be challenging people who are powerful but that can’t be a reason for his harassment.”
“They are seeking my (Zubair’s) laptop because I have been challenging many things. The laptop has nothing to do (with the case). They want my laptop because I’m a journalist. They want a phishing enquiry,” Grover said.
She said that tweet in question was published by Zubair in 2018. “Someone recently tweeted Zubair’s tweet of 2018, and the present case was filed. The anonymous Twitter handle had its very first tweet, which cited Zubair’s tweet, which has been picked up by police,” the counsel said.
Media bodies condemned the arrest of Zubair and called for his immediate release.
The Editors Guild of India termed the arrest as “extremely disturbing”. “It is apparent that Altnews’ alert vigilance was resented by those who use disinformation as a tool to polarise society and rake nationalist sentiments,” it said in a statement.
Demanding Zubair’s release, the Guild said: “This is necessary to buttress the commitments made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the G7 meet in Germany to ensure a resilient democracy by protecting online and offline content.”