Delhi Court adjourns Mohammed Zubair bail hearing to July 14; Zubair alleges "pattern" in case

A Delhi Court on Tuesday adjourned to July 14 the bail hearing of Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair, who was booked for, among other things, promoting enmity among religious groups through his tweets..Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala adjourned the matter after noting that the Supreme Court was hearing a separate case involving Zubair..Appearing for Zubair, advocate Vrinda Grover reiterated that the tweet in question was a still from a 1983 film that everyone has seen. Pointing to a pattern in the case, she said,"This is an anonymous Twitter handle and he tags Delhi Police and retweets my tweet and says he has hurt my sentiments...See the timing...FIR lodged a few hours after the tweet comes from the anonymous handle.".Submitting that the Police was constantly adding to the initial case, she said,"Har second mein improvement hai...What is, after 4 years, so provocative, and will create mayhem? 37 years after the film came...koi jhagda, danga-fasad nahi hua [there hasn't been any riots or fighting on account of the film]."Referring to the anonymous Twitter handle, she went on to state,"This Twitter profile is made in 2021. He has only one follower. No algorithm can lead him to this tweet. Delhi police finds it. While doing social media monitoring they would have certainly seen all other tweets with Twitter image and words, but they did not find anyone else. There is malafide writ large.".Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava informed the Court that he is in Bhopal and sought time to reply since the Supreme Court was hearing a separate matter related to Zubair.The Court proceeded to adjourn the matter to July 14..Zubair moved the Court for bail after the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate dismissed his plea for bail and sent him to 14 days of judicial custody on July 2..He was initially booked for offences under Sections 153A (promoting enmity between religious groups) and 295 (injuring or defiling place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).Subsequently, offences under Section 35 of Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act, 2010 and Sections 201 (destruction of evidence) and 120b (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC were added.The case against Zubair was based on a complaint from a Twitter handle called Hanuman Bhakt alleging that Zubair had tweeted a questionable image with the intention to deliberately insult a Hindu God.Zubair's lawyers have maintained that the tweeted image was a screenshot from a 1983 movie 'Kissi se na kehna'..Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27 and had been remanded to one-day police custody by the duty magistrate.He was then produced before CMM on June 28 and was remanded to further police custody for 4 days.Subsequently, he was remanded to judicial custody for 14 days.Zubair has also been booked by the Uttar Pradesh (UP) Police in two separate FIRs.He was booked by Sitapur Police in a case of hurting religious sentiments in which the Supreme Court granted him interim bail on July 8.He was remanded to 14-day judicial custody in another FIR registered in UP's Lakhimpur Kheri district.