The Allahabad High Court refused to quash the Uttar Pradesh police’s FIR against fact-checker Mohammed Zubair over his social media posts against a temple priest Yati Narsinghanand’s incendiary remarks on Prophet Muhammad.
While allowing to continue the interim protection from arrest given to Zubair, the High Court said that fair investigation was needed in the case, LiveLaw reported.
AltNews co-founder Zubair had filed a plea to quash the FIR registered in October 2024, over his tweets on inflammatory anti-Prophet remarks made by Narsinghanand, head priest of the Dasna temple in Ghaziabad. The priest has a history of hate speeches for which he has been booked multiple times in the past.
The FIR against Zubair was registered based on a complaint from BJP leader Udita Tyagi following protests at the Dasna temple soon after the police filed an FIR against Narsinghanand himself, for his alleged remarks against Prophet Mohammed during an event held at Hindi Bhawan in Ghaziabad in September 2024.
Zubair shared a thread of videos on Narsinghanand on October 3. The first tweet had a video showing Narsinghanand making inflammatory remarks about the Prophet. The priest, known for making hate speeches, urged people to burn effigies of the Prophet, sparking protests from Muslim communities across Uttar Pradesh, who demanded strict action.
In his second post in the thread, Zubair wrote, “For people supporting Yati Narsinghanand. Here is a video of Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati Maharaj’s vile comments about women in politics, especially BJP women leaders in politics (2021).” Along with this tweet, Zubair posted a video of Yati making derogatory comments about women politicians.
The thread also included one more video from 2022, where Yati Narsinghanand made demeaning remarks about former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.
Though Zubair was highlighting controversial speeches by Narsinghanand from the past, Udita Tyagi alleged in her complaint that the old videos were shared with the intent of inciting violence by Muslims. The complaint blamed Zubair, along with Arshad Madani and Asaduddin Owaisi, for the protests at the Dasna temple.
Zubair was charged with promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, fabricating false evidence, outraging religious feelings, criminal defamation, and criminal intimidation.
Zubair’s counsel argued that he only shared the videos to highlight Narsinghanand's hate speeches and urge the police to take action against him, LiveLaw reported.
Earlier, Zubair had contested the defamation charges too, arguing that sharing publicly accessible videos of Narsinghanand’s comments does not constitute defamation. He had pointed out that Narsinghanand was already out on bail for a separate hate speech case, with conditions barring him from making statements that could incite communal disharmony.