The Allahabad high court on Thursday refused to quash an FIR against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair over his tweets (X posts) on Yati Narsinghanand’s ‘derogatory’ speech. The court, however, extended the interim protection from arrest during the course of the investigation.
Disposing of a writ petition filed by Zubair, a division bench comprising justices Siddhartha Varma and Dr Yogendra Kumar Srivastava passed this order, as it observed that a fair probe was required in the matter. The court also restrained Zubair from leaving the country pending investigation.
“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,” the court added in its 37-page judgment.
The Ghaziabad Police had registered an FIR against Zubair in October 2024, accusing him of promoting enmity among religious groups following a complaint by one Udita Goswami, an associate of the controversial priest Yati Narsinghanand.
In the present writ petition, Zubair had moved the high court, challenging the FIR, under which Section 152 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India) was added later on.
{{/usCountry}}In the present writ petition, Zubair had moved the high court, challenging the FIR, under which Section 152 of the Bhartiya Nyaya Sanhita (endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India) was added later on.
{{/usCountry}}According to Zubair, by posting a thread of videos featuring Yati Narsinghanand on October 3 and later sharing other tweets with his various controversial speeches, he aimed to highlight the priest’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 alleged that due to Zubair’s tweets, violent protests were held at Dasna Devi Mandir in Ghaziabad.
During the course of hearing, the Uttar Pradesh government defended the FIR by arguing that Zubair created a narrative through his X posts and attempted to incite the public. The timing of his X posts was also questioned, with the government claiming he added fuel to the fire. It was also argued that his X posts contained half-baked information, damaging and threatening India’s sovereignty and integrity.
However, Zubair claimed that his posts were part of his professional obligation as a fact-checker and that they did not amount to any offence under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita or the Indian Penal Code. He also contended that he was exercising his freedom of speech by highlighting Narsinghanand’s conduct, and that not just him, but many news media handles and social media users wrote about the same issue.