Delhi High Court orders man to apologise for calling AltNews' Mohammed Zubair a 'jihadi'

The Delhi High Court on Thursday ordered a man named Jagdish Singh to put an apology on his X (Twitter) handle for calling fact-checker and Alt News journalist Mohammed Zubair a ‘jihadi’. .Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani said that the apology should be on Singh's X handle for at least two months. Singh had commented, "Once a jihadi is always jihadi”.The Court said the apology tweet must refer to this comment. Justice Bhambhani said that the apology tweet should read, "I regret making the above comment, which was not made with any malice or intention to hurt or offend Mohammed Zubair."During the hearing Justice Bhambhani examined some of the other posts made by Singh and remarked that such people should be barred from social media. Meanwhile, the Court directed Zubair not to retweet, directly or indirectly, the apology tweet put out by Singh.The Court added that Zubair cannot use the apology for any civil or criminal proceedings against Singh either. .The order had been passed on a petition filed by Zubair in the year 2020. Zubair approached the High Court for quashing of the Delhi Police FIR after he called out Singh for being a troll and retweeted his display picture which featured his daughter but after pixelating/ blurring the daughter's image.The tweet read,“Hello Jagdish Singh. Does your cute grand daughter know about your part time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you to change your profile pic.”Subsequently, Zubair was booked by the Delhi Police which invoked the provisions of Protection of Children from Sexual Offices Act (POCSO Act) as well as sections of the Information Technology Act and the Indian Penal code for allegedly "threatening and torturing" a minor girl on Twitter..The Police later filed an affidavit before the High Court saying it has not named Zubair in the chargesheet because it did not find any criminality against him.However, the High Court pulled up the police for failing to act against Singh who had made “hate speech” against Zubair.After the Court's stern remarks, Delhi Police examined Singh and said that nothing incriminating came out against him. The Police filed a report stating that Singh’s tweet does not cause fear or alarm to the public and that is why no case was registered against him.