Mohammed Zubair moves Supreme Court seeking quashing of six UP Police FIRs, challenges constitution of SIT

Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, has approached the Supreme Court seeking to quash six first information reports (FIRs) registered against him by the Uttar Pradesh Police (UP Police)..In the alternative, the petition has prayed that the said FIRs may be clubbed with the FIR in Delhi where Zubair was first arrested.Zubair has also sought interim bail in all 6 FIRs.Further, he has als challenged constitution of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) by the UP government to probe the six cases.The petition drafted by advocates Vrinda Grover, Soutik Banerjee, Devika Tulsiani and Mannat Tipnis has been filed through advocate Aakarsh Kamra.The Uttar Pradesh government had on Tuesday formed the SIT to investigate the six cases registered against Zubair in various districts of the State.The SIT is led by Preetinder Singh, Inspector General of Police (Prisons), and has Amit Verma, Deputy Inspector General of Police as a member..The six cases registered against the Zubair are in Hathras, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar, Lakhimpur Kheri and Sitapur.The cases in Sitapur and Lakhimpur Kheri are for tweets made by the fact checker.The case against Zubair in Sitapur was registered for hurting religious sentiments after he had put out a tweet against Mahant Bajrang Muni, Yati Narsinghanand and Swami Anand Swaroop referring to them as 'hate mongers'.The Supreme Court had granted him interim bail in the Sitapur FIR.The Lakhimpur Kheri case was registered last year in September, 2021, under Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code [promoting enmity between different groups], on a complaint by one Ashish Kumar Katiyar, a journalist working at Sudarshan TV.The complainant had taken objection to a tweet posted by Zubair in May 2021. In the tweet, Zubair had said that a report carried on the said news channel, which super-imposed an image of a famous Medina mosque on an image of the Gaza strip, incorrectly showed that the said mosque was destroyed in Israeli air-strikes.He is currently in judicial custody in that case.Zubair is also accused in another case registered in Delhi.The Delhi police case against Zubair was based on a tweet put out by the fact-checker in 2018 containing a screenshot of a 1983 Bollywood movie, Kissi se na kehna.Zubair is in judicial custody in relation to the Delhi Police FIR and his bail plea in that case is pending before Additional Sessions Judge.