A Delhi court, on Friday, July 15, granted bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair, in a case related to a tweet he had posted in 2018. Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala of Patiala House Courts heard his application in the case related to a 2018 tweet made by him, which the complainant said was “hurtful to his religious sentiments”. A magisterial court, on July 2, had rejected his bail plea and sent him to 14-day judicial custody. The court ordered Zubair to pay Rs 50,000 bond with one surety and asked him not to leave the country without permission of the court.
Zubair was arrested by the Delhi police on the night of June 27, after being summoned for interrogation related to a case registered in 2020 over his tweet calling out an abusive user. After being called for questioning in this case on June 27, he was then arrested for a different case, which accused him of trying to cause communal disharmony. The tweet made by Zubair had a picture of a scene from a Hindi movie, Kissi Se Na Kehna. The FIR states that the scene in which a lodge named 'Honeymoon Hotel' was renamed after Hindu god Hanuman was an insult to the Hindu religion and was provocative.
Zubair is booked under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court had earlier sentenced him to 14 days of judicial custody, following his five-day custodial interrogation. He is in custody till July 16.
Earlier this month, a case against Zubair was registered under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language, etc.) and 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Police said the case was registered on the complaint of a Twitter user who accused him of hurting religious sentiments.
While seeking an extension of Zubair's custody by five days, the police had earlier told the trial court that the accused was allegedly “following a trend” where he used religious tweets in an effort to get “famous”, and that there was a “deliberate effort to create social disharmony and hurt religious feelings”. The investigating agency had also said that the accused joined the probe but did not cooperate and various materials from his phone were deleted.
However, Zubair also has other cases filed against him by the UP police. On Thursday, July 14, he moved the Supreme Court seeking the quashing of six FIRs registered against him in UP. He has been remanded to 14 days' custody in Hathras, in a case accusing him of hurting religious sentiments. He was brought there from Tihar jail in Delhi and was remanded till July 27.