The Supreme Court on Friday granted interim bail for 5 days to AltNews co-founder and journalist Mohammed Zubair in the FIR registered by the UP Police for allegedly calling three Hindutva seers- Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop as ‘Hate mongers’.
A vacation bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and JK Maheshwari granted interim bail to Zubair for five days and posted the case for further hearing before a regular bench.
However, Zubair will remain in jail for now as he still did not get any bail in a case registered by the Delhi Police for allegedly hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity through his tweet made in 2018, in which the hotel has been changed from ‘Honeymoon Hotel’ to ‘Hanuman Hotel’. However, the picture is a screenshot taken from the Hindi movie ‘Kissi se na kehna’ released in 1983.
The fact-checker was booked under IPC section Section 295-A which penalizes deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs and Section 67 of the IT Act which stipulates punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form. Later, the police dropped Section 67 IT Act and added Section 153A IPC in the case.
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Rabia Shireen is a Staff Reporter at The Cognate.
