The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Uttar Pradesh Police not to take any precipitate action against journalist Mohammed Zubair in five out of six first information reports filed against him in the state till July 20. The Alt News co-founder has already been granted interim bail in the sixth case.
The court’s order means that the police cannot take him into custody in cases in which he has not been arrested or seek his remand.
Earlier in the day, Zubair’s counsel Vrinda Grover mentioned his plea to quash all the six cases registered against him in Uttar Pradesh before Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, who ordered it to be listed before a bench headed by Justice DY Chandrachud.
Within six hours, Justices Chandrachud and AS Bopanna said that no precipitate steps should be taken against Zubair. The journalist’s plea to quash all cases in Uttar Pradesh will be heard on July 20, the justices added.
“Contents of all FIRs seem to be similar,” Justice Chandrachud observed orally at the hearing, according to Live Law. “What seems to be happening is, as he gets bail in one case, he is remanded in another. This vicious cycle is continuing.”
One case each has been filed against Zubair in the districts of Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Muzaffarnagar and Ghaziabad and two in Hathras. They are related to satirical comments about television news anchors, allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Hindu community and posting alleged inflammatory content about deities.
At Monday’s hearing, Grover said that rewards have been announced for registering FIR against her client. “I am shocked by this,” she added. “Rs 15,000 announced for person who files the first FIR, Rs 10,000 for filing a complaint. There is evergreening of his custody by seeking remand in multiple cases.”
On July 8, a bench led by Justice Chandrachud granted him a five-day temporary bail in the case filed in Sitapur after his counsel said that he was facing death threats. The court extended his bail on July 12 and said that a final hearing on the police complaint against him would be held on September 7.
On July 12, the Uttar Pradesh Police said it has formed a Special Investigation Team to look into the six cases against Zubair. The investigation team will be led by Inspector General (Prison) of Lucknow Preetinder Singh.
In his plea before the Supreme Court, Zubair has also challenged the formation of the Special Investigation Team.
On July 15, a court in Delhi granted him bail in the original case for which the police had arrested him on June 27. But, the 39-year-old will remain in custody until he gets bail in the other five cases filed in Uttar Pradesh.
Cases against Zubair
Sitapur: Zubair has been booked in Sitapur for calling three Hindutva supremacists hatemongers in a tweet. All three of the seers mentioned by Zubair – 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.
Lakhimpur Kheri: In the Lakhimpur Kheri case, an Uttar Pradesh court on July 11 sent Zubair to judicial custody for 14 days. Zubair was booked in September for fact-checking a report carried by the television channel Sudarshan News about the Israel-Palestine dispute.
The complaint was filed by Ashish Kumar Katiyar, a journalist working with Sudarshan News. The police registered a first information report on September 18, 2021, after Katiyar approached a local court seeking directions for the same.
In the tweet, Zubair had pointed out that Sudarshan News had superimposed a fabricated image of the Al Masjid An Nabawi mosque in Medina on a picture of the Gaza strip to falsely portray that the mosque was being destroyed in an Israeli rocket attack.
Ghaziabad: In Loni town of the western Uttar Pradesh district, a case was filed against him for reporting about an elderly Muslim man’s beard being forcibly chopped off by men who beat him up. The police accused the journalist and co-accused of communalising the incident that occurred in June 2021.
Muzaffarnagar: A case has been filed based on a complaint by Ankur Rana, the general secretary of the Hindu Jagaran Manch in the district. Rana claimed that he “got to know” that Zubair had posted “false news” about the Sudarshan News show on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Alt News co-founder had allegedly issued him “death threats” when he had called him up to discuss the matter.
Hathras: The FIR was filed based on a complaint by Deepak Sharma, a Hindu supremacist who has repeatedly called for violence against minorities. He accused Zubair of lampooning Hindu deities and mythological characters on Twitter, without mentioning specific references to any tweets. He also alleged that Zubair tweeted an “edited clip” of suspended Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nupur Sharma, who had made disparaging remarks about Prophet Mohammad.
The second Hathras case relates to an FIR filed in the Sikandar Rao police station on June 10. A suo-moto FIR by the police, it refers to violence that erupted after Friday prayers when Muslims protesting against Nupur Sharma’s remarks clashed with the police, said station house officer Ashok Kumar Singh. However, Singh said Zubair wasn’t named in the FIR. “Instructions came from the top for it to be clubbed with the SIT cases,” he said.
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