Interim protection to Mohammad Zubair in Sitapur FIR to continue: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Monday ordered that the interim protection granted to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair by the top court in the case registered against him by Uttar Pradesh Police will continue until further orders [Mohammed Zubair v. State of Uttar Pradesh]..A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna directed that the matter be listed for final disposal on September 7."State seeks time to file a counter affidavit. Reply to be filed within 4 weeks and rejoinder within 2 weeks thereafter. Interim bail in Sitapur FIR case shall continue till further orders. List for final disposal on September 7, 2022," the order said.The Court was hearing a plea by Zubair seeking quashing of the first information report (FIR) registered against him by the UP Police in Sitapur..The vacation bench of Supreme Court led by Justice Indira Banerjee had had earlier granted the fact-checker an interim bail for 5 days in the case.The case against Zubair was registered by the UP police for hurting religious sentiments based on a tweet he had put out against Mahant Bajrang Muni, Yati Narsinghanand and Swami Anand Swaroop referring to them as 'hate mongers'.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 (IT Act).He had approached the Allahabad High Court to quash the case but the same was turned down leading to the present appeal. .Zubair is also facing two other cases for his tweets - one in Delhi and the other on UP's Lakhimpur Kheri.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.It is slated to be heard on July 14. In the Lakhimpur Kheri matter, a local court had remanded Zubair to judicial custody for 14 days yesterday..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.In the First Information Report (FIR), the complainant had claimed that Zubair was inciting Muslims against the news channel by posting the tweet. Twitter is also arraigned as an accused in the case for failing to take down the said tweet.