Delhi High Court agrees to hear Zubair’s plea on Friday

AltNews co-founder's lawyer Vrinda Grover says her client has been arrested because 'I have been challenging people who are influential'

Zubair being taken to his apartment in Bangalore  on Thursday.: Bangalore News Photo

TT Bureau   |   Bangalore, New Delhi   |   01.07.22 : Delhi High Court has agreed to hear on Friday a plea from AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair challenging his police remand on the charge of hurting religious sentiments through a 2018 tweet.

On Thursday morning, a Delhi police team flew to Bangalore with Zubair and took him to his locked first-floor flat in Kaval Byrasandra, east Bangalore. It was not immediately clear if the police found what they were looking for.

Pratik Sinha, AltNews co-founder and Zubair’s colleague tweeted: “For a tweet, why does Delhi police need to find the original device? They can see the tweet even on their own phones or summon Twitter for details. It is clear that the police is on a desperate fishing expedition. The act of seizing the device is for purposes beyond this case.”

Zubair, arrested on Monday, was sent to a day’s police custody by a magistrate. Another Delhi court on Tuesday extended the remand by four days after the police said Zubair had been “non-cooperative” and needed to be taken to his Bangalore home for the recovery of the laptop from which the tweet was posted.

Zubair’s lawyer Vrinda Grover on Thursday moved the plea challenging Tuesday’s lower court order before the bench of Justice Sanjeev Narula, who agreed to hear it on Friday. A favourable verdict would lead to bail for the journalist.

In Bangalore, some 10 police personnel, some of them from the southern city, surrounded Zubair as the group stepped out after spending almost four hours in the flat. They bundled Zubair into a police vehicle and sped away without giving him a chance to speak to the reporters waiting outside the gate.

Grover had on Tuesday told the lower court the entire case against Zubair bordered on the absurd. She said Zubair had tweeted, without editing, a still image from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1983 film Kissise Na Kehna that had cleared the censors and faced no charges of offending sensibilities.

She said her client had been arrested because “I have been challenging people who are influential”.

Zubair was arrested weeks after he called out now-suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s derogatory comments against Prophet Mohammed. Delhi police have registered an FIR against Sharma but so far not arrested her.

Journalists’ bodies have demanded Zubair’s immediate release, saying those who use disinformation to polarise society resent AltNews’s vigilance.