Delhi Police on Monday arrested Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair on the charges of promoting enmity and insulting religious beliefs.
Zubair was booked under sections 153A (promotion of enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language) and 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), Delhi Police said.
According to police, a complaint was received against the co-founder through Twitter regarding a tweet by Zubair.
He was called for questioning today after which the IFSO unit of the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested Zubair, police said. Zubair will be presented in Patiala House court and the police will seek his custody.
Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Alt News, commented on his colleague`s arrest and wrote on Twitter, "Zubair was called today by special cell, Delhi for investigation in a 2020 case for which he already had a protection against arrest from High Court."
"However, today at around 6.45pm we were told he has been arrested in some other FIR for which no notice was given which is mandatory under law for the Sections under which he has been arrested. Nor FIR copy is being given to us despite repeated requests," Sinha said in a statement on the microblogging site.
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