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Zubair’s bail petition rejected, sent to 14-day judicial custody
Mohammad Zubair was produced before chief metropolitan magistrate Snigdha Savaria following the expiration of his four-day police custody.
Journalist Mohammad Zubair was on Saturday denied bail and sent to jail for 14 days by a Delhi court in connection with a tweet he posted in 2018.
Zubair, who recently flagged controversial comments on Prophet Mohammed by suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma, was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27 over the tweet they said was objectionable.
On Saturday, Zubair was produced before chief metropolitan magistrate Snigdha Savaria following the expiration of his four-day police custody. The police did not seek an immediate extension of his police custody and instead asked that he be sent to 14-day judicial custody.
Denying bail to Zubair, the CMM took note of the three more sections added in the FIR against Zubair -- 120B (criminal conspiracy), 201 (disappearance of evidence) and section 35 of the Foreign Contribution Regulations Act (FCRA) violations -- and said that the “matter is at an initial stage of investigation”.
“In view of the aforesaid, since the matter is at an initial stage of investigation and overall facts and circumstances of the case and nature and gravity of the offences alleged against the accused, no ground for grant of bail has been made out. The bail application of the accused is accordingly dismissed…accused is remanded to 14 days judicial custody,” the judge said in an eight-page order.
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The court also rejected a plea seeking the sealing of Zubair’s electronic devices, asserting that it cannot be decided at this stage since the examination is still in progress. It said that nothing was put on record to show that the earlier mobile phone, from which the post was made, was lost.
The order came almost five hours after the deputy commissioner of police (Special Cell), KPS Malhotra, claimed that Zubair’s bail application was rejected and their request for 14 days of judicial custody has been accepted.
Zubair was produced at around 10.30 am before the judge at the Patiala House Court at the end of his four-day custodial interrogation. As the police made an application to send Zubair to 14 days in custody, his counsels moved a bail plea, arguments on which continued till 1pm. The judge reserved the order and said that she would pronounce it post-lunch.
However, around 2.26 pm, the text from DCP Malhotra to some reporters created a furore among Zubair’s counsel who was baffled to see the media reporting about the bail dismissal even before the judge came to the court and pronounced the order.
Sitting in the last row in the courtroom and tucked in between two officers of the Special Cell, Zubair was also tense as he waited for the court to pronounce the order, amidst this confusion.
Minutes later, advocate Soutik Banerjee for Zubair, spoke to reporters outside the courtroom and said that he was “extremely shocked” to see that DCP Malhotra has leaked in the media about the court order. He said that he had learnt about the DCP’s text about bail denial by seeing the Twitter posts of several news channels and law reporters who were running the news attributing it to the top cop.
“It is extremely scandalous and it speaks about the status of rule of law in our country today that even before the judicial magistrate has sat and pronounced the order, the police have leaked the order to the media. How KPS Malhotra leaked this order is beyond me and calls for serious introspection..,” Banerjee said.
After the chaos, DCP Malhotra later sent out another text which read, “I had a word with my IO, I misheard it due to noise and inadvertently the message was posted in the broadcast”. The order was finally pronounced after 7pm.
Opposing the bail plea, senior public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava told the court that Zubair, the co-founder of fact-check website Alt News, was accused of getting money via payment gateway Razorpay from Pakistan, UAE, Singapore, Syria, Riyadh etc, adding that Zubair is the Director of Pravda media, which is the parent company of Alt News.
He said that all the sources are being probed and police might seek Zubair’s custody later to know if Zubair knew the donors, adding that the transactions have to be analysed and there might be a violation of Income Tax as well.
He told the court that additional sections have been incorporated in the FIR besides, 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language, etc.) and 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Countering the arguments, Zubair’s lawyer, Vrinda Grover, told the court 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.”
A day after the arrest, the police got a four-day remand to question him. 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, 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.
She also questioned the credibility of the complainant’s Twitter handle and said, “This Twitter handle (Hanuman Bhakt) pulls out this tweet for what purpose. He says his religious sentiments are hurt, but this is not the ‘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.
Earlier this month, a case against Zubair was registered under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, language, etc.) and 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
The 33-year-old journalist was arrested on Monday over the post shared about four years ago. The post was said to have a clip from a 1983 comedy film -- Kissi Se Na Kehna -- with Farooq Sheikh and Dipti Naval in the lead roles.
Claiming it a “blatant case of mala fide”, Grover said, “ All the tweets in question are already on social media. The movie which is being referred to is not banned and since the last 40 years, it has not caused any disturbance... There cannot be anything more brazen than this..This Twitter handle pulls out this tweet for what purpose. He says his religious sentiments are hurt, but this is not ‘Indian Hurt Sentiment Code’. This is the Indian Penal Code (IPC),” she further said.
With respect to the allegations of tampering with the phone, Grover says that I can do anything with my current phone because it is not evidence
“My current phone is not related to the offence as the earlier phone was lost. I can do anything with my current phone since it’s my private property and not evidence in this case. So 201 IPC ( disappearance of evidence) is not made out against Zubair,” she argued.
