Mohammed Zubair's bail plea rejected, sent to 14-day judicial custody by Delhi court

A Delhi court on Saturday denied bail to AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair in a case related to an alleged objectionable tweet he had posted in 2018 against a Hindu deity. The court sent him to 14-day judicial custody. 

Zubair was produced before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria on Saturday. Delhi Police moved the court for a 14-day judicial custody, whereas Zubair moved the court for the bail application.

Delhi Police have added fresh charges of criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence against the fact-checker. The new charges have been added along with Section 35 of the FCRA or Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act.

The Delhi High Court had yesterday sought a response from Delhi Police on a plea by Zubair challenging the legality of his police remand in a case related to an alleged objectionable tweet he had posted in 2018 against a Hindu deity.

Opposing Zubair's bail plea, the prosecution has submitted before a Delhi court that they are investigating donations allegedly received by him from several foreign countries such as Pakistan.

The prosecutor told the court that Zubair was the director of the company. “You are the director. Becoming a journalist is not a crime, doing such type of things is a crime and you deserve to be prosecuted,” Shrivastava argued.

Grover argued that it was “not a crime to be a director” and that no notice was served to the company.

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.

After being produced on the expiry of his one-day custodial interrogation, his custody was extended by another four days by the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM).

Earlier in June, a case was registered against Zubair under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on 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).

Police said the case was registered on the complaint of a Twitter user who accused him of hurting religious sentiments. 

Police, while seeking an extension of Zubair's custody by five days, had told the trial court that the accused was allegedly following a trend where he used religious tweets in an effort to get famous and that there was a deliberate effort to create social disharmony and hurt religious feelings.