India’s top inspector in court for posting hate speech

More than two years after the Supreme Court granted bail and ordered the “immediate release” of Mohammed Zubair from jail, India’s leading spy and journalist is back in court.

On Tuesday, the Allahabad high court will hear his plea in a fresh case as police in northern Uttar Pradesh sought his arrest, accusing him of “endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity”.

The charge is non-bailable and a conviction could mean a minimum of seven years in prison and a fine or life imprisonment.

Zubair, who is the founder of the fact-checking website AltNews, denies all the allegations against him. “I feel guided by the work I do,” he told the BBC.

Described by some as “thorn in the sides government because he committed hate crimes on his own”, Zubair is wanted in relation to the text he posted on X which shows the hate speech of the controversial Hindu priest.

Shared on October 3, the post includes a video showing Yati Narsinghana and presenting views against the Prophet Muhammad that many Muslims find offensive.

The 60-year-old priest is the head of the powerful Dasna Devi temple in the Uttar Pradesh city of Ghaziabad and has been in the news several times for openly calling out violence against Muslims. In 2022, he was you are arrested for making Islamophobic and misogynistic comments and spent a month in jail.

A day after Zubair’s post revealed his latest offensive comments, Muslims protested outside the mosque. Police said 10 people were arrested for allegedly pelting stones during the protest, PTI reported.

Several Muslim groups filed police complaints against Narsinghanand and the priest disappeared from public view amid reports of his arrest. The police, however, rejected that.

A few days later, hundreds of Narsinghanand’s supporters surrounded the local police station, demanding action against Zubair. Police filed a case against the inspector after Uditya Tyagi – a politician from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a close aide of the minister – filed a complaint.

In the first complaint, Zubair faced minor charges – including inciting enmity between different religious groups, defamation and giving false testimony. But last week, the police added Article 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita – as in India new legal code summoned – in the list of charges, accusing him of “endangering the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India”.

This, legal experts say, allows the police to arrest Zubair. His lawyer has asked for temporary bail and asked the court to cancel it.

In response, Zubair says that he was not the only one who wrote the words of Narsinghanand and that a number of journalists, politicians and media channels had tweeted this video before him.

“The police registered a case against me because of the complaints of the fans of a man who always speaks hateful words. And they go after the person who reports the hate speech, while the people who say the hate speech get away with it,” he said.

“This is an attempt to silence the people who are trying to hold the government accountable,” he added.

Pratik Sinha, Zubair’s colleague and co-founder of AltNews, says the authorities are after Zubair because of the work he does and because of his influence.

“It is a common case of shooting the messenger. It’s a witch hunt,” he told the BBC.

“Why did the police file serious charges against him after two months? It’s not just Narsinghanand and his followers who are after him – it’s actually the government who is after him.”

The addition of the felony charge against Zubair has also been criticized by rights groups and groups representing journalists and media in India who say Article 152 is a “new version” of the colonial-era sedition law.

Amnesty International India it said it was an example of how the law was used to “harass, intimidate, and persecute human rights defenders, activists, journalists, students, film producers, musicians, actors and writers for peacefully exercising their right to free speech”.

Press Club of India they are condemned this step and they want the police case against Zubair to be withdrawn.

“All sane minds were against this section as it has the power to shut the mouths of thinkers and the media freely. It can also be imposed on those who criticize the decision,” said the statement.

Digipub, an association of digital media organizations, condemned the “increasing harassment” of Zubair and described the allegations against him as “baseless”.

“This is a vindictiveness and unreasonable overreach through government agencies,” he said.

The government faced similar criticism in 2022 when Zubair was arrested and spent more than three weeks in jail before the Supreme Court released him on bail.

Delhi police arrested him for a 2018 tweet that was a reference to a popular 1980s Bollywood film, but accused him of “insulting Hindu religious beliefs”. Later, the Uttar Pradesh police also registered cases against him, accusing him of other offenses including criminal conspiracy and receiving foreign funds.

BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia had accused him of being “selective and politically biased” in fact-checking and said his tweets “hurt the religious sentiments of a large number of Hindus”.

But many at the time linked his arrest to controversial Islamophobic comments made by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. A Hindu The newspaper said Zubair “must pay for the tweet that drew so much attention to Sharma’s bad words” about the Prophet Mohammad and described it as an example of “the government’s intolerance of fact-checkers who regularly expose their claims”.

Human rights organizations and the United Nations have also expressed concern, with UN chief Antonio Guterres’ spokesman saying “journalists should not be jailed for what they write, tweet, and say”.

But critics say that is exactly what the authorities are using to extort Zubair and other journalists.

India has been falling steadily in the Global Press Freedom rankings – now ranked 159 out of 180 countries – according to media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“Journalists critical of the government are subject to cyber harassment, intimidation, threats and physical attacks, as well as criminal prosecution and arbitrary detention,” RSF’s annual report. report said.

In the past, the Indian government did rejected the report, says its methodology was “dubious and lacks transparency”.