On Saturday, July 2, the Delhi Court rejected the bail application of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of leftist propaganda portal Alt News and sent him to 14-day judicial custody, reported ANI.
The decision was taken after the court heard both sides of the argument. In the bail hearing that continued today, the Delhi Police had sought 14-days of judicial custody of Mohammed Zubair and added sections of criminal conspiracy, destruction of evidence and FCRA violation to the case. Meanwhile, Lawyer Vrinda Grover, representing Zubair, insisted the court approve her bail plea of Zubair claiming that the investigation in the case was already over.
Zubair’s counsel Vrinda Grover informed the court on his behalf that the Delhi police had issued a media update this morning regarding financial donations received by AltNews, but Grover said that the money was actually going to a company named Pravda media and not to Zubair personally.
Responding to this, public prosecutor Atul Srivastava, representing the Delhi police, informed the court that the “donation has come from Pakistan, Syria and the same has been mentioned in the CD.” Srivastava also pointed out that Zubair is the director of Pravda.
Interestingly, Pravda Media Foundation runs the so-called fact-checking site Alt News and Mohammed Zubair is one of the directors of the company along with Managing Director Nirjhari Mukul Sinha and Director Pratik Mukul Sinha. It may be noted that Pratik and Zubair are co-founders of Alt News, while Nirjhari Sinha is Pratik Sinha’s mother.
The public prosecutor argued in court that a total of about Rs 2,31,933 has been received by Pravda Media. “From the analysis of the reply received from Razorpay Payment gateway, various transactions, with phone numbers or IP addresses outside India, were from locations incl Bangkok, Manama, North-Holland, Singapore, Victoria, New York, England, Riyadh Region, Baladīyat ad Dawḩah, Sharjah, Stockholm, Aichi, Central, Western & Eastern Provinces of UAE, Abu Dhabi, Washington DC, Kansas, New Jersey, Ontario, California, Texas, Lower Saxony, Bern, Dubai, Uusimaa, & Scotland, said Atul Srivastava, appearing on behalf of the Delhi Police.
Srivastava added that during social media analysis, it was noticed that Twitter handles supporting Mohammad Zubair after his arrest, were from Pakistan and mostly middle eastern countries like UAE, Bahrain & Kuwait.
Meanwhile, once again going on the same rant about Zubair’s laptop, phone and other electronic devices, which the Alt News co-founder is not wanting the Delhi police to examine, Vrinda Grover told the court “There is a lot of hue and cry over why I don’t want to produce electronic devices and what is it I want to hide. The police is to make a prima facie case, only then I am required to produce them. They can’t ask me to produce and then make a case about me.”
Grover further told the court that her client had filed a complaint in March 2021 saying someone smashed the phone that he used to Tweet. “They cannot doubt me for formatting my phone. The phone that I used in 2018 was lost,” Grover reiterated in court.
Zubair’s lawyer once again insisted in court that the Tweet in question was from 2018 and it is just being used to harass her client. “A complainant with one follower pulls up a tweet from 2018. Section 468 of CrPC places a bar on taking cognisance. They are doing this just to harass me,” Vrinda Grover said in court while insisting the court approved her bail plea of Zubair claiming that the investigation in the case was already over.
Public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava informed the court that today was the second bail plea and that Zubair’s counsel had raised these same points in the previous plea too.
“The tweet was posted in 2018, but it’s still there. If it’s there, everyone else is following. It’s a continuing offence, not a case where it’s deleted,” argued public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava.
Shrivastava brought to the court’s notice the timing and circumstances in which Zubair deleted the Tweets, which he said was important. “He has deleted things. Why? Timing of this is important. There is no change in circumstances on their side,” said the public prosecutor, adding that Zubair’s bail deserves to be dismissed.