Delhi police arrest journalist as Modi defends free speech

ONE of India’s most prominent journalists who has regularly debunked fake news shared by the country’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been arrested.

Police in Delhi detained Mohammed Zubair on Monday as part of a broader civil rights crackdown. His arrest came while Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, signed a pledge at a G7 summit to protect freedom of speech online.

Mr Zubair co-runs the online platform Altnews, which rose to prominence by exposing fake news broadcast by BJP members and associated Rightwing Hindu groups.

The platform proved a widely-shared BJP theory that India’s opposition Congress Party had paid Muslim women to attend protests against a new Islamophobic citizenship law was false.

Mr Zubair also repeatedly disputed propaganda by Amit Malviya, the head of the BJP’S IT cell, including that India’s Muslims had raised anti-hindu and propakistan slogans during protests.

Police in the capital said Mr Zubair would be held for questioning for four days after allegedly hurting religious sentiments with a tweet he posted in 2018, one year after Altnews was established. “Before 2014: Honeymoon Hotel. After 2014: Hanuman Hotel #Sanskaarihotel [Cultured Hotel],” he tweeted, seemingly a satirical comment on the Hindu nationalist policies pursued by Mr Modi since he was elected in 2014.

Mr Zubair has come under increasing pressure from authorities to curb his activities and he has reportedly already had six other cases filed against him.

Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party

‘Arresting one voice of truth will only give rise to a thousand more. The truth always triumphs’

leader, strongly condemned the arrest of Mr Zubair.

“Every person exposing BJP’S hate, bigotry and lies is a threat to them,” he said. “Arresting one voice of truth will only give rise to a thousand more. The truth always triumphs over tyranny.”

On Monday, Mr Modi was a special guest at the G7 summit in Germany, where he signed a pledge with other countries, including Britain, to “lay and protect the foundations for free and vibrant civic spaces” and protect freedom of speech online and offline.