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The Karnataka High Court today allowed Co-founder of Alt News, Mohammad Zubair to withdraw his transit anticipatory bail plea in connection with the circulation of a fake video.

The Single Judge Bench of Justice Mohammad Nawaz was hearing a plea of transit anticipatory bail by Mohammed Zubair in relation to the FIR filed against him and 8 others u/s 153, 153 A, 295 A, 505 & 120 B for allegedly sharing a fake video to fan communal tension

Advocate Vrinda Grover appearing for Zubair submitted that Zubair had attended and joined investigation is PS: Loni. Therefore he was  seeking to withdraw his petition, since there is no apprehension of arrest. It was further submitted that he would approach the Court if he  apprehends any arrest.

 The Court having heard the submissions of Grover granted liberty to withdraw the petition and approach teh concerned in case of future threat of arrest.

Earlier, the Court on June 22, 2021 had observed that since the Uttar Pradesh police had sent him a notice under section 41(A) of the Criminal Procedure Code, he would not be arrested if he complied.

An FIR had been filed against Alt News Co-Founder Mohammed Zubair, Rana Ayyub, Saba Naqvi, the Wire & congress leaders Shama Mohammed, Salam Nizami & Maskoor Usmani. 

Twitter Inc. & Twitter Communications Pvt. Ltd. were also named in the FIR for failing to take down/flag the tweets.

The FIR was  filed at 11.20 PM on June 15 at P.S. Loni Border under sections 153 (provoking riots), 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups), 295A (insulting religious beliefs), 505 (statements inducing public mischief) & 120B (punishment of criminal conspiracy).

The contents of the FIR (translated from english to hindi - not verbatim) are as under:

"Some people have circulated a video on their social media handles. This video has some mischievous elements who are beating up a senior citizen namely Abdul Samad Saifi , forcefully cutting his beard. It is alleged that the mischievous elements are from the Hindu Community and they have forced Abdul Samad Saifi to say "Jai Shri Ram" and "Vande Mataram". 

The aforementioned people have circulated the video on their handles without inquiring into the veracity of the clipping. They have given the alleged incident a communal colour, with a clear intention to incite communal hatred between the Hindu and Muslim communities.

The tweets by these twitter handles were retweeted and shared on a large-scale. Upon preliminary investigation by Ghaziabad police, it was found that the people in the video were known to Abdul Samad Saifi since before and that Saifi has sold them a Tabeez (amulet), which they claimed did not work as promised. Following this, the mischievous elements, in a fit of rage, beat up Abdul Samad Saifi. The Ghaziabad police arrested three persons in this light. It was found that the people involved were actually from both hindu and muslim communities. Following this, the police immediately released a press note detailing the sequence of events on their twitter handle (on intervening night of June 14/15, 2021). Be it as it may, the accused persons continued to incite communal hatred and due to this, this fake news with communal colour spread rapidly. In Spite of this, Twitter Inc. and Twitter Communications India Pvt. Ltd. did not remove the tweets from the said handles.

Considering their influence, the aforementioned accused persons have a responsibility that they must keep up. Needless to say, this is not the first time that the accused persons have tried to peddle fake and misleading news."

Case Title: Mohammad Zubair v. State of Karnataka | CRL P. 4403/2021