AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair has moved the Supreme Court seeking the dismissal of the six FIRs registered against him for hurting religious sentiments of the people through his tweets.
Zubair has prayed that these FIRs be clubbed with the one filed first regarding his 2018 tweet and also challenged the constitution of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was formed by the Uttar Pradesh government to investigate his case. The SIT was formed under the leadership of Inspector General Preet Inder Singh and has Deputy Inspector General Amit Verma as one of its members. The FIRs registered against Zubair are in Hathras (2), Muzaffarnagar, Lakhimpur Kheri, Sitapur and Ghaziabad.
The Lakhimpur Kheri case was registered against him in September 2021 under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code on a complaint by Sudarshan TV journalist for posting a misleading tweet that said a report is carried on the said news channel for incorrectly portraying the destruction of Medina mosque in the Israeli air-strikes.
Zubair is already in judicial custody in a case relating to his 2018 tweet. He has been returned to judicial custody thrice and on July 2, he was finally remanded for a period of 14-days of custody by Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) Snigdha Sarvaria. Zubair is also charged with making hate speech remarks against Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop. Charges under Section 295A of Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 67 of the Information Technology (IT) Act, 2000 have been invoked against him by the UP Police in these earlier cases.
Zubair is currently in the judicial custody of Delhi Police. The petition has been drafted by Vrinda Grover, Soutik Banerjee, Devika Tulsiani and Mannat Tipnis and has been filed through Advocate Aakarsh Kamra.