An anonymous Twitter handle whose only post led to the arrest of Mohammed Zubair, a co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, does not exist on the social media platform anymore.

The handle @balajikijaiin, which went by the name of Hanuman Bhakt and had a profile image of Hindu deity Hanuman, objected to a tweet posted by Zubair in 2018, which showed an image of a hotel signboard repainted from “Honeymoon Hotel” to “Hanuman Hotel”.

Responding to this post on June 19, the user had written that it was an insult to Hanuman.

Advertisement

Notably, this was the only tweet posted by the anonymous account, which had only three followers until Monday evening when Zubair was arrested by a cyber unit of the Delhi Police on charges of hurting religious sentiments.

The first information report was registered against the journalist by the Delhi Police on June 20.

On Wednesday morning, a message said, “This account doesn’t exist.”

At a hearing in a Delhi court on Tuesday, Senior Advocate Vrinda Grover, representing Zubair, had raised questions about the legitimacy of the Twitter account, Live Law reported.

Advertisement

“We are in June 2022,” Grover said. “If an anonymous Twitter handle chose to create mischief in the country, those reasons should be investigated I think. Abuse of legal process is writ large over here.”

To this, the public prosecutor argued that the Twitter user was a “mere informer” and the complaint against Zubair cannot be called an anonymous one.

“He is not an anonymous complainant,” the public prosecutor contended. “His details are here. Without details, no one can get a Twitter account.”

Following the arguments, the court sent Zubair to police custody for four days.

Also read:

  1. Zubair arrested for posting image from 1983 film, complaint by Twitter handle with just one tweet
  2. Six curious questions raised by the case against Mohammed Zubair