Allahabad High Court refuses to quash FIR against Alt News' Mohammed Zubair for tweet calling Hindu leaders "hate mongers"

The Allahabad High Court on Friday refused to quash a First Information Report (FIR) registered against Alt News co-founder, Mohammed Zubair for a tweet calling Hindu leaders Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop "hate mongers" [Mohammed Zubair v. State Of UP]..A Bench of Justices Ramesh Sinha and Ajai Kumar Srivastava-I refused to entertain the plea on the ground that the matter was still at a premature stage, and that the investigation had not yet taken place."The evidence has to be gathered after a thorough investigation and placed before the Court concerned on the basis of which alone the Court concerned can come to a conclusion one way or the other on the allegations levelled by the petitioner," said the Bench. Therefore, it was stated that if the allegations were bereft of the truth and made maliciously, the investigation will reflect it..Zubair was booked under Section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code(IPC) and Section 67 (publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act, 2000.He moved the plea submitting that he had not insulted or attempted to insult the religious beliefs of a class by way of his tweet, and the FIR had only been lodged to harass him. .On the contrary, the State opposed the plea, arguing that Zubair was a habitual offender who had earlier posted offensive tweets, for which four cases had been registered against him.In response to this, counsel for Zubair submitted that he had been granted interim relief in some of these cases, and was released on bail in others..After hearing the parties, the Court dismissed Zubair's petition to quash the case against him, stating in its order,"...this Court is of the considered view that the submissions advanced by the learned Counsel for the petitioner call for determination on questions of fact which may be adequately discerned either through proper investigation or which may be adjudicated upon only by the trial court and even the submissions made on points of law can also be more appropriately gone into only by the trial Court in case a charge sheet is submitted in this case...".Zubair was represented by Advocate Mohd Kumail Haider, while Additional Government Advocate Santosh Kumar Mishra appeared for the State..[Read Order]