Five FIRs still pending against Mohammed Zubair in U.P.

One of the FIRs against him has been registered for the rioting in Hathras on June 10 after the Friday namaz but does not mention Zubair, his work or social media activity 

Of the six cases the Uttar Pradesh Police is investigating against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair, five are for his Twitter posts - where he either reported hate crime against Muslims, fact-checked television reports and other false information online, or called out television channels for hosting communal debates. The other FIR is a rioting case from June 10, where neither Mr. Zubair nor his work or social media is mentioned.

Earlier this week, the Uttar Pradesh police formed a Special Investigative Team (SIT) to probe these six cases. Mr. Zubair has already secured interim bail in one of these cases from the Supreme Court and has moved another plea in the top court seeking to quash all the UP cases against him or club them together and transfer them to Delhi. 

The most recent of these cases was registered at the Kotwali police station in Hathras on July 4, on the complaint of one Deepak Sharma of the Rashtriya Swabhiman Dal, a Hindu right-wing outfit based in Hathras. Mr. Sharma alleged that the journalist likened Vatican City to the shape of a “shivling” and Lord Krishna to Christ “to make fun of Hindu gods”.

The tweet Mr. Sharma is referring to is from October 30, 2021, where Mr. Zubair was making fun of a right-wing Twitter user for making the above-mentioned claims - now being incorrectly attributed to the fact-checker himself. Mr. Sharma added that the journalist also allegedly made fun of Mahabharat characters by claiming they used advanced technology like laptops. This post too was part of a satire thread posted in April 2018, in a bid to highlight such claims made by Hindu seers and BJP leaders on record.

The tweets Mr. Sharma referred to in his complaint had been compiled in a single thread and posted on Twitter on June 13 by a user known as @thehawkeyex as part of a right-wing social media campaign to get Mr. Zubair arrested for highlighting ex-BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s remarks against Prophet Muhammad on a television debate. Mr. Sharma said he filed the complaint on June 14. 

In addition, Mr. Sharma alleges that Mr. Zubair had “edited” the news channel debate video where Ms. Sharma made the remarks. This FIR has been registered under Sections 153A, 295A, 298 of the IPC and Section 67 of the IT Act.

The FIR that preceded this was registered at the Sikandra Rao police station of Hathras district on June 10 in reaction to one of the country-wide protests against Ms. Sharma’s Prophet remarks. The FIR names 35 accused, 100 other unknown accused and details how alleged rioting took place on June 10 after the Friday namaz.