Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair was arrested by Delhi Police on Monday for allegedly hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity. Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha said Mohammed Zubair was called to Delhi for questioning in a different case but arrested after this case was filed at the spot.
"No FIR copy is being given to us despite repeated requests," he tweeted.
A case was earlier registered 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 against Zubair, K P S Malhotra, DCP (Cyber Crime), said.
After his arrest, #IStandWithZubair started to trend on Twitter.
Here's you need to know about Mohammed Zubair:
Mohammad Zubair is the co-founder of an Indian fact checking website Alt News, which he founded along with former software engineer Pratik Sinha, the son of a trained physicist, lawyer, human rights activist and the co-founder as well as president of Jan Sangharsh Manch, Mukul Sinha.
Zubair and Sinha founded the Alt News website Feb 9, 2017 to combat a phenomenon of fake news. The team of Alt News has also written a book titled “India Misinformed: The True Story” published by HarperCollins which was released in March 2019.
The fact-checker has been under attack from Hindu nationals for calling out hate speech by Yati Narsinghanand, Mahant Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop.
The Hindu leaders whom Zubair called hatemongers are known for making provocative and objectionable remarks against Muslims, and Yati Narsinghanand was also jailed in a hate speech case and later given bail.
Zubair was originally summoned for questioning in the 2020 POCSO case, but has been arrested in a different case. The POCSO case against Zubair was registered in 2020 over his tweet calling out an abusive user and confronting him. A user had abused Zubair in a reply to his tweet about a fact check, and Zubair had responded by sharing the user's profile picture with the caption: "Does your cute granddaughter know about your part-time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you change your profile pic." Zubair had blurred out the minor girl's face while sharing it.
