A Supreme Court bench led by Justice DY Chandrachud on Wednesday granted bail to AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair in all the six cases filed against him in Uttar Pradesh. The top court further clubbed all the six FIRs and transferred them to Delhi’s Special Cell. The transfer shall amount to all present charges and future FIRs that may be filed on the issue, the SC further stated in its order. “Existence of powers of arrest must be distinguished from the exercise of powers of arrest which must be used sparingly,” stated the top court in its orders, reported Bar and Bench. The top court also disbanded the SIT set up by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe all six cases against Zubair in the state. The top court was hearing Zubair’s plea seeking bail and quashing of all FIRs filed against him in Uttar Pradesh over hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity among others.
The decision comes over a month after Zubair had tweeted former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s video that sparked outrage both in India and abroad. He was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27, after a litany of charges were filed against him in UP and Delhi. There are a total of eight cases against the fact-checker, with two from Delhi and eight from Uttar Pradesh. The UP Police is working in tandem with a Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed to investigate all the cases against Zubair in the state. Zubair had secured interim bail in the Sitapur case so far.
On July 18, the top court had barred police officials in UP from taking any action in the cases registered against him in Lakhimpur Kheri, Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad and two others in Hathras till today’s hearing.
An FIR was lodged against Zubair in Sitapur for calling Hindu seers ‘hatemongers.’ He was charged under IPC Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and Section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act. On June 27, Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police for a separate case pertaining to Zubair’s tweet from 2018 where he posted a “questionable image with a purpose to deliberately insult the god of a particular religion,” according to the police officials. The picture depicting the change of a hotel’s signboard from “Hanuman Hotel” to “Honeymoon Hotel” was taken from a 1983 movie.
Earlier this month, a Delhi court had denied bail to Zubair after the police said that they were also probing him under Section 35 of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) and have added the same to his FIR copy. The police claimed that Pravda Media Foundation, the parent company of Alt News, had received funding from several countries like Pakistan, Syria, Bahrain, UAE, and Qatar.