NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Saturday rejected the bail plea of Alt News co-founder and fact-checker Mohammed Zubair in a case of promoting enmity among religious groups based on an objectionable tweet put out by him in 2018. With that, he has been placed in 14-day judicial remand.
The arrest has come barely a month after Zubair flagged a video of since-suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma speaking against Prophet Mohammed on a TV show.
The police claim there was a criminal conspiracy, insisting that the case is "not just of a simple tweet". The public prosecutor claims that the accused accepted money through Razorpay payment gateway from Pakistan, Syria and other countries, which requires further investigation.
"Donations are from Pakistan, Syria; so considering the gravity, it's not just a case of a simple tweet... He smartly deleted everything. Deletion of data from phone after FIR is important," the police said.
Zubair's lawyer Vrinda Grover, in turn, told the Delhi court that "formatting a phone is not illegal." She argued that he did not know of the FIR until his arrest on June 27. ‘‘(Zubair) was not aware of the FIR and the phone was not summoned. It's not illegal to format my phone. It is not arms and ammunition, or a drug. I take serious legal and constitutional objections," the lawyer said on Zubair's behalf.
