Offensive tweet case: AltNews' Zubair moves Delhi High Court
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New Delhi: Arrested AltNews cofounder Mohammed Zubair moved to Delhi High Court on Thursday, challenging his police remand in the case of an alleged objectionable tweet on a Hindu deity, PTI reported.
Appearing for Zubair, advocate Vrinda Grover mentioned the petition before Justice Sanjeev Narula, who agreed to list the matter for hearing on Friday. The petition challenges a June 28 order of a trial court, allowing Zubair to police custody for four days.
Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27 for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through one of his tweets and was sent to one-day police custody by the trial court on the same day.
Delhi police had arrested Zubair on January 27, and he was sent to one day of police custody by the trial court. After that custody expired, the same court extended his custody for four days.
A case was registered against Zubair earlier this month under 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on the 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). The case was registered on the basis of a complaint by a Twitter user who accused Zubair of hurting religious sentiments.
While requesting five days of custody, police told the court alleged before the court that Zubair was following a trend of posting a series of religious tweets to get famous as well as to create social disharmony and hurt religious feelings. Though the accused joined the probe, he did not cooperate in addition to deleting material from his phone.
Meanwhile, Zubair's counsel alleged that the probe team called him on the pretext of another case but arrested him in the present case in haste.
"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 agency is playing mischief," Grover submitted.