Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair refuses to hand over electronic devices to cops after arrest: Sources

Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair has refused to hand over the electronic gadgets used by him in 2018, when he had posted the allegedly offensive tweet that got him arrested.

Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, has refused to hand over the electronic gadgets used by him in 2018, when he had posted the allegedly offensive tweet that has landed him in jail.

Sources told India Today that Zubair has challenged the Delhi Police team probing the matter to recover the device used to post the tweet from his home in Bengaluru. He has claimed that he lost the mobile handset used by him at that time.A Delhi court sent Zubair to one-day police remand after rejecting his bail plea. Police are likely to seek three more days’ custody of Zubair to recover his mobile phone from his Bengaluru home.

Zubair was arrested on Monday after a Twitter handle alerted the police about tweets that were detrimental to communal harmony. He has been charged under sections 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code.

Sources said Zubair initially refused to identify the tweet which led to his arrest. The sources have also said that he recently deleted several tweets whose contents were allegedly offensive. Police are trying to recover the deleted tweets.

As multiple tweets show Zubair seeking crowd funding, the IFSO (Intelligence Fusion & Strategic Operations) unit of Delhi Police wants to retrieve electronic data to find out the source of the funding received by him.

Investigators suspect the money could have been routed from across the border and had layering to keep the source hidden.