Lagatar24 Desk
New Delhi, June 28: The Editors Guild of India condemned the arrest of Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair and demanded his immediate release.
According to a Delhi Police First Information Report (FIR), Zubair was detained for a 2018 tweet that was “extremely offensive and more than sufficient to provoke feelings of hatred” among people.
Notably, he was detained by the Delhi Police Special Cell on Monday on suspicion of encouraging animosity amongst various groups based on religion and performing intentional acts to incite religious sentiment.
In the tweet, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News Mohammed Zubair included a scene from the 1983 film Kissi Se Na Kehna by famed director Hrishikesh Mukherjee.
Mahua Moitra, a member of the Trinamool Party, and others have compared Nupur Sharma, a suspended BJP spokesperson whose comments about Prophet Muhammad sparked outrage and condemnation from various Gulf nations, to Sharma. They have noted that while Sharma is still at large while the fact-checker was quickly detained, Zubair and Sharma have both been charged with the same offences (sections 153 and 295 of the Indian Penal Code).
In actuality, Mohammed Zubair brought Sharma’s disrespectful remarks during a news debate to light first.
“This is extremely disturbing because Zubair and his website AltNews have done some exemplary work over the past few years in identifying fake news and countering disinformation campaigns, in a very objective and factual manner. In fact, it was an exposure of toxic remarks of a ruling party spokesperson on a TV channel that allowed the party to make amends,” reads the guild’s statement.
The Editors Guild of India condemns the arrest of Muhammad Zubair, co-founder of the fact checking site AltNews, by the Delhi Police on June 27, for a tweet from 2018. EGI demands that the Delhi Police should immediately release Muhammad Zubair. pic.twitter.com/q9uYqFxaPA
— Editors Guild of India (@IndEditorsGuild) June 28, 2022
Earlier, a group of online news outlets had denounced Zubair’s detention and urged the Delhi Police to drop their charges against him right away.
