Delhi Court Rejects Bail Plea Of Alt News Co-founder Zubair

Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police on Monday night on the charges of promoting enmity on religious grounds and deliberately hurting religious feelings, a non-bailable offence, through a tweet.

The tweet by Zubair was "highly provocative and more than sufficient to incite the feeling of hatred" among people, the Delhi Police First Information Report (FIR) says.

"Transmission and publication of such posts have been deliberately done by Mohammed Zubair@zoo_bear through electronic media to insult the religious feelings of a particular community with the intent to provoke breach of peace...," the FIR states.

In the tweet, he shared a clip from Hrishikesh Mukherjee's 1983 classic Kissi Se Na Kehna. In the photo, one could see a hotel board that reads "Hanuman Hotel" in Hindi. Paint marks suggest that it was earlier called 'Honeymoon Hotel' and the "Honeymoon" was changed to "Hanuman". So Zubair wrote, "Before 2014: Honeymoon Hotel, After 2014: Hanuman Hotel".

According to the sources, Zubair has deleted many tweets whose contents were allegedly offensive. The cops are trying to recover the deleted tweets. 

Zubair was produced before the court where the police sought remand for his custodial interrogation, saying it was required "to unravel the conspiracy". Delhi court rejected the bail plea and he was sent to one-day police remand. According to the reports, police are likely to seek three more days' custody of Zubair to recover his mobile phone from his Bengaluru home. Zubair claimed that he lost the mobile phone which he used at that time.

Also Read: Delhi Police Arrests Journalist Mohammed Zubair for Allegedly Hurting Religious Sentiments