HC refuses to quash FIR against Mohammed Zubair | Prayagraj News
Prayagraj: The Allahabad high court on Thursday refused to quash an FIR against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair over his ‘X’ posts on Yati Narsinghanand’s ‘derogatory’ speech.The court, however, extended the interim protection against his arrest during the course of the investigation.Disposing a writ petition filed by Zubair, a division bench comprising Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Dr Yogendra Kumar Srivastava passed this order, as it observed that a fair probe was required in the matter.The court has also restrained Mohammed Zubair from leaving the country pending investigation in the case.“India is a country which has a variety of religions, tribes and races and they have all merged together and are very peacefully living together. Whether restraint was being exercised by the petitioner would be something which would have to be looked into by the investigating agencies,” added the court in its 37-page judgment.Zubair is facing an FIR lodged by the Ghaziabad police in October 2024, accusing him of promoting enmity among religious groups following a complaint by one Udita Goswami, an associate priest Yati Narsinghanand.Zubair moved the high court, challenging the FIR, under which the offence of Section 152 Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita [Act endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India] was added later.According to Zubair’s plea, by posting a thread of videos on October 3 featuring Yati Narsinghanand’s and later sharing other tweets with his various controversial speeches, he aimed to highlight Narsinghanand’s ‘provocative’ statements and urge the police authorities to take strict action against him.The complainant, Udita Tyagi, on the other hand, blamed Zubair for sharing Yati’s old video clips with the intent of inciting violence by Muslims. She also alleges that due to Zubair’s tweets, violent protests were held at Dasna Devi Mandir in Ghaziabad.During the course of the hearing in the matter, the Uttar Pradesh government defended the FIR by arguing that Zubair had created a narrative through his X posts and attempted to incite the public. The timing of his ‘X’ posts was also questioned, claiming that he had added fuel to the fire. It was also argued that his X posts contained half-baked information and they damaged and threatened India’s sovereignty and integrity.Zubair, on the other hand, claimed that his posts were made as part of his professional obligation as a fact-checker and that such posts do not amount to any offence under the BNS or the Indian Penal Code. It was also contended by him that he was exercising his freedom of speech by highlighting Narsinghanand’s conduct, and not just him, but many news articles and social media accounts had posted about the same issue.
