Supreme Court grants five-day interim bail to Alt News’ Zubair in UP ‘hate’ tweet case

NEW DELHI:The Supreme Court on Friday granted interim bail for five days to fact-checking website Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair in an FIR registered against him by Uttar Pradesh police in Sitapur for a tweet in which he allegedly called three Hindu seers as ‘hate mongers’.

A vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari said its interim bail order is only with respect to THE FIR lodged in Sitapur against Zubair and it has nothing to do with the case registered in Delhi.

“We are making it very clear, that this interim bail is in relation to THE FIR dated June 1, 2022, of Sitapur and not any other FIR against the petitioner,” the bench said.

Zubair, however, will remain in judicial custody in a separate FIR registered by the Delhi Police, as the apex court made it clear that its order is only related to the Sitapur case.

Imposing conditions on bail, the apex court said that he shall not tamper with electronic evidence in Bengaluru or anywhere else. He shall not tweet regarding the case, said the bench. It also made it clear that this order will also not impede the investigation, seizure of evidence in the Sitapur case.

“The order of the Judicial Magistrate First Class dated July 7, 2022, Sitapur, be translated into English and filed in court along with order rejecting the prayer of bail. In the meantime, the petitioner shall be granted an interim order of bail for a period of five days on conditions to be imposed by Judicial Magistrate First Class,” the bench stated in its order.

Zubair is already in judicial custody in a case registered by the Delhi police for allegedly hurting religious sentiments over a tweet posted by him in 2018. He was produced before the Sitapur court on Thursday, which rejected his bail application and sent him to judicial custody.

The Supreme Court was hearing Zubair’s plea seeking protection from arrest and challenging the Allahabad High Court order refusing to quash FIR registered for a tweet for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.

During the hearing, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta opposed Zubair’s plea and said that it is not about one tweet. “Whether he is part of a syndicate which is regularly posting such tweets with the intention to destabilise the country. There is something more than what meets the eye in this case. There are many facts suppressed and he says he runs a fact-checking website,” the SG said.

“There is some kind of money angle too. Whether donations from countries inimical to India have been received by them is under investigation,” he told the bench.

The Solicitor General said that one isolated tweet is not the offence, his overall conduct is being criminally investigated and he is a habitual offender.

Additional Solicitor General S V Raju said that whether there is the intention or not of outraging religious sentiments it is the scope of the investigation. “You call a spiritual leader a hate monger and you outrage religious feelings. There is an attempt to promote disharmony and ill will among religious groups,” he added. “If he is granted bail and his remand is rejected then he can destroy evidence in Bengaluru”, ASG Raju said.

The ASG further said that a prima facie case is made out under 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language, etc.) against Zubair and it’s not a fit case for entertaining this application.

Appearing for Zubair, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said that if he is performing the role of pointing out hate speech and reporting to police, it is not promoting enmity between religions, he is promoting secularism, in fact. He is telling them to stop promoting enmity, stop hate speech, Gonsalves added.

Gonsalves further told the bench that no criminal case can be made out against Zubair. “The foundation of this case is a tweet. Here, we seek a quashing of proceedings and questions of police or judicial custody are irrelevant now. There is no case made out and the proceedings need to be quashed.”

He also said that people have been arrested for hate speech and they have been released on bail too and then again they go on to make hate speech. “I (Zubair) have not spoken against any religion. I was only speaking of hate speech in respect of which the persons who had been arrested and released again. I only said till hate mongers like this are there… then who else do we need. All the others released on bail but I, a secular tweeter, was arrested. When I call them hate monger, I am not wrong,” the senior counsel said.

Gonsalves said Zubair’s life is in danger and that is why he moved the court. “There are many who are advising police to torture me or have me killed. Zubair is in jail and he should be released immediately and should be sent home where he will be secured.”

Gonsalves referred to some tweeter threat where he said there is a statement to “directly shoot him” and Rs 1 lakh reward has been announced.

The vacation bench passed the order of granting interim bail to Zubair and said the case will now come up before a regular bench when the court reopens.

Zubair has approached the top court challenging the Allahabad High Court’s June 10 order where it had refused to quash an FIR registered against him in Sitapur, Uttar Pradesh saying that it was premature to interfere when the investigation was at a preliminary stage.

Filing the appeal against the High Court order, Zubair also sought direction to stay the investigation in the case and direction for UP police not to “proceed, prosecute or arrest” him on the basis of the FIR.

The FIR was registered for a tweet in which he allegedly called Hindu seers Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop “hate mongers” on Twitter.

The FIR was lodged against Zubai on June 1 under Section 295 (A) of the IPC and Section 67 of the IT Act at the Khairabad police station in Sitapur district for deliberately “outraging religious feelings” of the seers.

His appeal in the apex court has said that the allegations of the FIR against him are “absolutely false and baseless”. He claimed to be innocent and said he said that he has not committed any offence.

“The police is threatening to arrest the petitioner (Zubair) and the life and liberty of the petitioner is in danger. The inclusion of this criminal offence in the FIR portrays the cavalier, malicious and arbitrary manner in which the Respondents (UP police) have acted against the Petitioner,” the appeal stated.

It further stated, “There is a new strategy afoot of the police in communal crime cases. That is to register FIRs against those engaging in hate speech and communal crimes, as well as to rope in all secular elements monitoring such crimes and protesting police inaction against the wrong doers. This is done with the intention of stifling freedom of speech of secular persons in society who stand up against communal elements and to put fear into them so that they no longer protest. It is therefore imperative that this Court understand this new strategy and nip it in the bud so that secular social activism continues on its path and plays the most necessary role in society to stand up to communalism.” (ANI)