SC to hear plea of Alt News' Mohd Zubair seeking quashing of 'hatemongers' FIR today
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New Delhi: The Supreme Court today will hear a plea of journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair. The petition challenges the Allahabad high court's refusal to quash a first information report (FIR) registered against him by the Uttar Pradesh police for a tweet in which he allegedly called Hindu seers 'hatemongers'.
A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna will hear the case. His appeal in the top court had said that the allegations of the FIR against him are "absolutely false and baseless". He claimed to be innocent and said that he has not committed any offense.
"The police are threatening to arrest the petitioner (Zubair) and the life and liberty of the petitioner are in danger. The inclusion of this criminal offence in the FIR portrays the cavalier, malicious and arbitrary manner in which the Respondents (Uttar Pradesh Police) have acted against the Petitioner," the appeal stated.
Last week, the top court granted interim bail for five days to Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, in the FIR registered against him in UP's Sitapur.
The court had made it clear that the interim bail order was only with respect to FIR lodged in Sitapur against Zubair and it has nothing to do with the case registered in Delhi.
Zubair was told by the court not to post tweets regarding the case. It also made it clear that this order will also not come in the way of investigation or seizure of evidence in the Sitapur case.
The UP government has called him a habitual offender who is part of a syndicate, which is regularly posting such tweets with the intention to destabilize the country.
The fact-checker was first arrested on June 27 by the Delhi police over a four-year-old tweet that carried a screenshot from a Hindi film released in 1983. The arrest came days after he had flagged a video of now-suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma's provocative remarks on Prophet Mohammed on a TV show.