The Delhi High Court on Wednesday granted interim protection to the co-founder of the fact checking AltNews, Mohammed Zubair, in connection with the FIR registered against him. A bench of Justice Yogesh Khanna directed the police not to take any coercive steps and asked for a response from the police and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), on whose complaint a case was lodged, on the journalist's plea seeking quashing of the FIR against him.
The Delhi Police had registered an FIR against Zubair on August 9 for the offences under the Information Technology Act for allegedly “threatening and torturing a minor” on Twitter on a complaint received from the NCPCR.
On August 6, a user with the handle ‘@JSINGH2252’ abused Zubair in one of the replies to a tweet in which Zubair had published a fact check. Zubair responded to the abusive handle by sharing the user's profile picture with the caption: "Does your cute granddaughter know about your part-time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you change your profile pic." Zubair had blurred out the minor girl's face while sharing it.
Zubair had approached the high court seeking quashing of the FIR against him. He also sought a copy of the FIR saying the cyber cell refused to provide him the document.
The high court on Wednesday also directed Twitter India to cooperate with the police in the investigation of the matter.
Delhi government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra, representing the state and DCP of police, said though he has no instructions from the department about the matter but as an officer of the court he has no objection in supplying the copy of the FIR to the accused as he has a right to know the allegations against him.
The high court asked the police to provide him the copy of FIR so that he can respond to the allegations.
Zubair refuted the allegation levelled in the FIR as an absolutely frivolous complaint .
The high court asked Delhi Police and DCP Cyber Cell Anyesh Roy to file a status report within eight weeks and listed the matter for further hearing on December 8.
No coercive action against the petitioner (Zubair) till then, the judge said.
During the hearing, senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Zubair, submitted that he is the co-founder of the fact-checking website news outlet AltNews and debunks misinformation put out by individuals and political parties without any bias. Due to the nature of his work, he is often abused, threatened and demeaned by people.
He said two FIRs have been lodged against him for the same incident, one in Delhi and the other in Chhattisgarh.
He submitted that he was being trolled for his posts on Twitter by a man who abused, demeaned and even left communally charged comments on Zubair's Twitter page.
Later, the journalist posted the display picture of the man, standing with his minor daughter whose face was cautiously blurred by the petitioner and wrote a tweet. After this, a complaint was made against him with the NCPCR and an FIR was lodged.
Mehra submitted that the journalist was a habitual offender and till the time the police get information about a third Twitter handle, he can be given interim protection.
He said the police are still investigating the matter and the FIR was lodged solely on the version of complainant, NCPCR chairman.
Advocate Anindita Pujari, appearing for NCPCR chairman Priyank Kanoongo, submitted that he shall be deleted from the array of parties as he was only an informant and doing his statutory duty.
Zubair's counsel said the NCPCR chief was made a party as he had tweeted about the matter from his personal handle and not the commission's handle.
Last week, the NCPCR chief had tweeted, "According to the ATR received in @NCPCR_, an FIR has been lodged against the alleged persons for threatening and torturing a girl child on @Twitter. As per the request made by @TwitterIndia an additional time of 10 days has been provided to them to provide relevant information."