Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair has been remanded to one-day police custody, news agency ANI reported. His counsel had moved bail application which was declined by the court on grounds of "not finding merits."
Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police earlier today for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through one of his tweets. He has been booked under sections 153A (promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language) and 295A (Deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The Alt News co-founder was arrested in connection with one of his tweets that had a questionable image with a purpose to deliberately insult the god of a particular religion, the DCP said.
Police said the case was registered on the complaint of a Twitter user who accused Zubair of hurting religious sentiments.
Zubair was called for questioning today and he was "evasive on the questions and neither provided the necessary technical equipment for the purpose of the investigation nor cooperated in the investigation", they said.
"During investigation, the conduct of Mohammed Zubair was found questionable, which warranted his custodial interrogation to unravel the conspiracy in this matter. Accordingly, he has been arrested," they further said.
Meanwhile, Opposition leaders, including former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government over Zubair's arrest.
