Ghaziabad Police filed an FIR against Zubair for promoting enmity among religious groups following a complaint by a Yati Narsinghanand associate
Team Clarion
PRAYAGRAJ – The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday questioned Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt News and prominent fact-checker, for choosing to post Hindutva leader Yati Narsinghanand’s hate speech on social media rather than filing an FIR against the priest or approaching the court.
A bench of Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra was hearing a plea filed by Zubair against an FIR lodged against him over his post on ‘X’ regarding Narsinghanand’s hate speech. “If this person (referring to Yati Narsinghanand) is acting funny, then instead of going to the police, will you act more funny? Have you lodged an FIR against him? I will look at your conduct. If you don’t like his (Yati) speech and face, you should file an FIR against him,” said the bench.
The court orally remarked that glancing through Zubair’s post on X showed that he was trying to create social unrest.
Zubair maintained that he was simply exercising his freedom of speech by referring to Narsinghanand’s hate speech and highlighting his conduct.
Senior Counsel representing Zubair further stated that not just his client but many new articles and social media accounts had posted about the same issue, and Zubair had not said anything different, Live Law reported.
However, Justice Varma orally observed that it was not appropriate for Zubair to go to ‘X’ and post about the speech, the legal website reported.
Justice Varma said: “Come to the court then…you will go to social media handle… create social disharmony? Your rights end where my nose begins. Whatever he (Yati) says, you cannot go to social media…Who denies that Twitter cannot be used, but you cannot use it to instigate unrest. Glancing at the tweet shows that you are trying to create unrest.”
The Senior Counsel representing Zubair said that he could demonstrate that the Supreme Court had allowed such recourse. In 2022, while granting interim bail to Zubair in all FIRs registered by the Uttar Pradesh Police over his tweets, the Supreme Court refused to impose a bail condition that he should not tweet.
“It is like telling a lawyer that you should not argue. How can we tell a journalist that he will not write or utter a word?”, Justice Chandrachud had orally told Uttar Pradesh’s Additional Attorney Garima Prashad, Live Law reported.
The matter will now come up for a hearing on Friday, 20th December.
Zubair is facing an FIR lodged by the Ghaziabad Police last month accusing him of promoting enmity among religious groups following a complaint by an associate of controversial priest Yati Narsinghanand.
