Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur court today refused to give fact-checker Mohammed Zubair's custody to the police and has sent him to 14 days of judicial custody instead. He was summoned by Uttar Pradesh's Lakhimpur police in a case registered against him in September last year.
In this case, Mr Zubair will stay in judicial custody at the Sitapur jail until July 25. The court will hear his bail plea on July 13.
The fact-checker was produced in court through video conferencing.
A case was registered against Mr Zubair in Lakhimpur in September 2021 regarding a tweet against a private news channel. The complaint had been filed by a Sudarshan News employee for a tweet made by Mr Zubair on May 14, 2021.
The complainant, Ashish Katiyar, alleged that Zubair misled people through his tweet. In the tweet, Zubair had tweeted about the Sudarshan channel's coverage of the Israel-Palestine dispute.
"RW propaganda channel @SudarshanNewsTV has used a pic of Al Masjid an Nabawi from Madina, superimposed it with an old pic from Ghaza, with graphics bombing the Mosque. Is this reporting or trying to incite violence (sic)," the fact-checker had tweeted in May last year.
The Supreme Court had recently granted five days' interim bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in a case registered in Sitapur for hurting religious sentiments through a tweet.
Mohammed Zubair was first arrested on June 27 by the Delhi police over a four-year-old tweet that carried a screenshot from a Hindi film released in 1983. The arrest came days after he had flagged a video of now-suspended BJP leader Nupur Sharma's provocative remarks on Prophet Mohammed on a TV show.
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