The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair to move the Delhi High Court seeking the quashing of a case filed against him in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district, PTI reported.
Zubair is currently facing seven cases, including six registered in Uttar Pradesh and one in Delhi. On July 20, the court had transferred all the cases filed against him in Uttar Pradesh, including the one in Sitapur, to Delhi.
A bench comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Hima Kohli said on Wednesday that if the journalist moves the Delhi High Court under Section 482 of Code of Criminal Procedure, it should consider the petition on its own merit.
Section 482 of the Code of Criminal Procedure deals with the inherent powers of the High Court to pass orders so as to secure justice in a case.
The Supreme Court bench said that an order of the Allahabad High Court from June 10, which had refused to quash the first information report, should not influence the proceedings before the Delhi High Court, according to Live Law.
Zubair had moved the Supreme Court to challenge the Allahabad High Court’s order.
The journalist 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.
The first information report in Sitapur was filed on the basis of a complaint by Bhagwan Sharan, the Sitapur district head of Hindutva organisation Rashtriya Hindu Sher Sena. Sharan said in his complaint that his sentiments had been hurt by Zubair’s tweet.
The journalist was arrested in Delhi on June 27. He walked out of Tihar Jail on July 20 after the Supreme Court granted him interim bail.
The police’s allegations in the seven cases against Zubair pertain to satirical comments about television news anchors, allegedly hurting religious sentiments of the Hindu community and posting alleged inflammatory content about deities.
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