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04-12-2024
NEW DELHI/ ALLAHABAD: More than two years after the Supreme Court granted bail and ordered “immediate release” of Mohammed Zubair from prison, the leading Indian fact-checker and journalist is once again back in court.
On Tuesday, the Allahabad high court briefly heard his petition in a fresh case as police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh seek his arrest, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.
The charge is non-bailable and a conviction could mean a minimum of seven years in jail and fine or even life imprisonment.
Zubair, who’s a co-founder of the fact-checking website called AltNews, denies all the accusations against him. “I feel I’m being targeted because of the work I do,” he told media.
Just 20 minutes into Tuesday’s hearing, the judges recused themselves from hearing the case – now the case will have to be taken up by another court in the coming days.
Described by some as “a thorn in the side for the government because he’s single-handedly taking on hate crimes”, Zubair is wanted in connection with a post he put out on X spotlighting hate speech by a controversial Hindu priest.
Shared on 3 October, the post included a video that showed Yati Narsinghanand delivering comments against Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims found hurtful.
The 60-year-old priest is the head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad town and has been repeatedly in the news for openly calling for violence against Muslims. In 2022, he was arrested for making Islamophobic and misogynistic comments and spent a month in jail.
A day after Zubair’s post pointed out his latest offensive comments, Muslims protested outside the temple. Police said 10 people were arrested for allegedly pelting stones during the protest, PTI reported.
Several Muslim groups lodged police complaints against Narsinghanand and the priest disappeared from public view amid reports that he had been arrested. Police, however, denied that.
A few days later, hundreds of Narsinghanand’s supporters surrounded the local police station, demanding action against Zubair. Police opened a case against the fact-checker after Uditya Tyagi, a politician from India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a close aide of the priest lodged a complaint.
In the initial complaint, Zubair faced somewhat milder charges including promoting enmity between different religious groups, defamation and giving false evidence but last week, police added Section 152 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita as India’s new legal code is called to the list of charges, accusing him of “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.
This, legal experts say, allows police to arrest Zubair. His lawyer has sought interim bail and also asked the court to throw out the case.
In his defence, Zubair says he was not the only one who had posted Narsinghanand’s remarks and that a number of journalists, politicians and media channels had tweeted the video even before him.
“Police have registered a case against me based on complaints from the followers of a man who routinely gives hate speeches and they are going after someone who’s reporting hate speeches, while people giving hate speeches are going free,” he says.
“This is an attempt to gag people trying to hold the government to account,” he adds.
Pratik Sinha, Zubair’s colleague and the other co-founder of AltNews, says the authorities go after Zubair because of the work he does and because it makes an impact.
