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Mohammed Zubair received money from outside India, court told. His rebuttal
Mohammed Zubair was arrested on Monday over a 2018 tweet by the Delhi Police for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.
Journalist Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-check website Alt News, has been accused of getting money via payment gateway Razorpay from Pakistan and other countries as his bail plea was heard in a court in Delhi on Saturday. Fresh charges have been added against the 33-year-old journalist by the Delhi Police - Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 201( disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code. Police have also accused Zubair of receiving foreign funds in violation of the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act).
Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police on Monday over a 2018 tweet after he was accused of hurting religious sentiments.
“Donations have come from Pakistan and Syria. Zubair is the director of Pravda media,” public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told the court, adding that money was also received from Singapore, the UAE and Riyadh.
The court was told that the transactions need to be probed as there might be Income Tax violations.
Countering the arguments, Zubair's lawyer, Vrinda Grover, said on his behalf: “The money which is being alleged to be received in violation of the FCRA has not gone into my account. All money had gone into the account of Pravda Media. It is not a crime to be the director of the firm."
“Just because we say the names of a country, it becomes a suspicious circumstance. I have a brother living in Dubai... Can I speak to him during the pendency of the case?” Grover added.
A day after the arrest, the police got a four-day remand to question Mohammad Zubair, which ended on Saturday.
The 33-year-old on Thursday was taken to his Bengaluru home for further investigation where a laptop and a hard disk were seized. "Zubair was taken to Bengaluru with four officers but not a single technical person was taken. These are public resources… look at the conduct of the investigating agency. Even the hash value has not been generated," Grover told the court on Saturday, stressing that he should get bail and the investigation was over.
A hash value is a numeric value of a fixed length that uniquely identifies data.
"This Twitter handle (Hanuman Bhakt) pulls out this tweet which what purpose. He says his religious sentiments are hurt, but this is not ‘Indian Hurt Sentiment Code’. This is the Indian Penal Code," Grover underlined in the court during the hearing, referring to the complainant in the case and the 2018 tweet that had allegedly hurt his religious sentiments.
Zubair had recently flagged the comments by Nupur Sharma on Prophet Mohammed, which had sparked huge controversy both within the country and outside. Sharma was later suspended by the BJP as spokesperson.
