New Delhi: Alt News co-founder and fact-checker Mohammed Zubair on Monday sought an urgent listing of his plea in the Supreme Court seeking quashing of FIRs lodged against him in several districts of Uttar Pradesh for allegedly outraging religious feelings.
A bench headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana took note of the submissions of Zubair’s lawyer Vrinda Grover that the petitioner, a fact checker, and journalist, has been facing a slew of FIRs and his plea needed an urgent hearing.
List it before Justice DY Chandrachud. You can mention before that bench, said the bench.
The fresh plea of Zubair has also challenged the constitution of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) by the Uttar Pradesh government to probe the six cases.
The plea said all the six FIRs filed in Uttar Pradesh that has been transferred to the SIT for investigation is the subject matter of the FIR which is being probed by the Delhi Police special cell.
Separate FIRs have been lodged against Zubair in Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, and Hathras districts on charges of allegedly hurting religious feelings, making sarcastic remarks on news anchors, disrespecting Hindu gods, and inflammatory posts.
Cases against Zubair in Uttar Pradesh
Sitapur: Zubair is currently in Sitapur jail for calling out Hindutva leaders – Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Mahant Bajrang Muni, and Anand Swaroop – as ‘hatemongers’.
Lakhimpur Kheri: Zubair was booked by the Lakhimpur Kheri police for fact-checking a news report relating to the Israel-Palestine dispute that was carried out by a news channel, Sudarshan TV. The case was filed by its news anchor Ashish Kumar Katiyar. Zubair, in his tweet, had pointed out that the news channel used images of Al-Masjid an-Nabawi from Madina and superimposed it on an old picture from Ghaza, bombing the mosque.
Ghaziabad: The police have filed a communal case against Zubair. The fact-checker had posted a tweet showing an elderly Muslim man’s beard being cut off by a few Hindu radical elements.
Muzaffarnagar: Ankur Rana, the general secretary of the Hindu Jagaran Manch filed a case against Zubair for posting ‘fake news’ in relation to the Israel-Palestine conflict telecasted on Sudarshan TV. According to Rana, Zubair allegedly threatened him with death threats when Rana called him up to discuss the matter.
Hathras: Two cases have been filed in Hathras. Deepak Sharma, a Hindutva leader, filed a case against Zubair for inciting violence by making derogatory remarks on Hindu gods and goddesses and allegedly posting an ‘edited’ clip of suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma.
The second Hathras case refers to the violence that erupted between the Hindu and Muslim communities after Nupur Sharma’s derogatory remarks on Prophet Muhammed. However, the station house officer (SHO) Ashok Kumar Singh said wasn’t named in the FIR, and instructions came from the top for it to be clubbed with the SIT cases.
Zubair also has a case in the Delhi Patiala House court where he has been charged with insulting Hindu God Hanuman in his 2018 tweet.
(The story has been edited with inputs from the News Desk.)
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