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Journalism of Courage
Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, approached the Supreme Court on Thursday seeking bail in a case in which he was arrested by the Uttar Pradesh police for referring to some Hindu religious leaders as “hate mongers”.
Senior Advocate Colin Gonsalves mentioned the plea before a bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and J K Maheshwari and sought urgent listing on Thursday afternoon. After the bench pointed out that it has to be assigned by the Chief Justice of India, the counsel requested that it be listed on Friday. The court agreed to do so “subject to assignment”.
Gonsalves told the bench that Zubair’s role was to identify hate speech and forward it to respective police stations. “He made many enemies. Now, FIR was lodged against him, my main argument would be that a look at that FIR itself would show no crime,” he said.
The counsel said the Allahabad High Court had denied anticipatory bail to Zubair saying it was premature and he was arrested 2-3 days later.
“I seek bail for him urgently. There are death threats for him. People on the other side doing hate speech are very anxious and they have said on the internet that they will try and kill him,” he said.
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