Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, July 12: The bail hearing for Mohammed Zubair, a co-founder of Alt News, was postponed by a Delhi court on Tuesday to July 14. Zubair was charged with, among other things, encouraging hostility between religious groups through his tweets.
Devender Kumar Jangala, an additional sessions judge, called an adjournment after observing that Zubair’s case was being heard by the Supreme Court in a different proceeding.
Advocate Vrinda Grover, who was there on behalf of Zubair, emphasised that the tweet in question was a still from a 1983 movie that everyone has seen. She said, pointing out a pattern in the case: “This is an anonymous Twitter handle and he tags Delhi Police and retweets my tweet and says he has hurt my sentiments…See the timing…FIR lodged a few hours after the tweet comes from the anonymous handle.”
Since the Supreme Court was deliberating on a different case involving Zubair, Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava notified the Court that he was in Bhopal and requested time to respond.
The matter was then postponed until July 14 by the court.
After the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate denied Zubair’s request for bail on July 2, and sentenced him to 14 days in judicial detention, Zubair moved the court for bail.
He was first charged with violating Indian Penal Code 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).
Offences under Section 35 of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 and Sections 201 (destruction of evidence) and 120b (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC were also added.
Notably, the complaint against Zubair was made by a Twitter account called Hanuman Bhakt, who claimed that Zubair had posted a dubious image with the goal to purposefully offend a Hindu deity.
On June 27, the Delhi Police detained Zubair, who was later remanded to 24-hour police detention by the on-call magistrate. On June 28, he was then brought before CMM and given a 4-day remand to more police detention. He was then remanded for 14 days to judicial custody. The Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police have also filed two separate FIRs against Zubair.
He was charged by the Sitapur Police with hurting religious feelings, and on July 8 the Supreme Court granted him temporary release.
