New Delhi: A Delhi court on Friday granted bail to fact-checking website Alt News’ co-founder Mohammad Zubair in a case involving an alleged objectionable tweet in 2018 that “hurt religious sentiments and promoted enmity”.
Zubair, however, will stay in jail as he has been named in first information reports (FIR) in Uttar Pradesh.
On Friday, the Sessions Patiala Court gave the journalist bail on a personal bond of Rs 50,000.
Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala also said Zubair could not leave the country without the court’s permission.
The journalist was arrested on 27 June and has been in custody since then. He is currently in Delhi’s Tihar Jail.
Zubair was arrested under Section 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion) and Section 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult religion of any class).
Other sections like 295A, 201 and 120B and Section 35 of Foreign (Contribution) Regulation Act were also slapped on him.
The Delhi Police registered its case on a complaint, which alleged Zubair had tweeted a “questionable image with the purpose to deliberately insult the god of a particular religioin”.
The FIR said Zubair’s tweet in 2018 on the renaming of a “Honeymoon Hotel” after Hindu god Hanuman was an insult to their religion, according to the legal site LiveLaw.
His lawyer argued that the case was registered to get back at Zubair’s brand of fact-checking journalism.
After the Delhi Police’s FIR, Zubair was taken into custody by the Uttar Pradesh Police in relation to 6 FIRs registered against him over other tweets.
The Supreme Court granted Zubair bail in one of the cases (Sitapur), which was registered after the journalist tweeted that Yati Narsinghanand, Bajran Muni and Anad Swaroop were “hate-mongers”.
Courtesy: The Print
