Journalist Mohammed Zubair on Wednesday said that microblogging site Twitter had received a request from the Union government claiming that his account violated Indian laws.
It was not immediately clear what action the government had sought through the request. However, Twitter told the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News that it has not taken any action on the request as of now.
On June 1, the Uttar Pradesh Police booked Zubair under Indian Penal Code Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings) as well as Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act.
This was after the journalist called three Hindutva supremacists “hatemongers” in a tweet. All three seers – Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop – have been booked in hate speech cases in the past few months for making inflammatory statements about Muslims.
Zubair said that this was the fifth or sixth case that had been filed against him.
The Delhi Police had filed two cases against the Alt News co-founder in September 2020 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act for allegedly harassing and torturing a minor girl.
The cases were registered a month after Zubair had responded to an abusive message from Twitter user Jagdish Singh.
In his tweet, Zubair had posted Singh’s display picture, which features a little girl who is perhaps his granddaughter. Zubair had, however, blurred the girl’s face in the image.
On May 20, the police told the Delhi High Court that the tweet did not constitute a cognisable offence.
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