The Delhi Police on Monday evening arrested Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of AltNews, fact-checking website for allegedly hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity.
According to Pratik Sinha, co-founder, AltNews, Delhi Police had allegedly summoned Zubair for questioning in a two-year-old POCSO case, but was subsequently arrested on a different charge of spreading communal disharmony.
"No FIR copy is being given to us despite repeated requests," co-founder Pratik Sinha tweeted.
Sinha further tweeted that Zubair was taken to the hospital for a routine medical examination and post that they were headed to an undisclosed location. Sinha in his tweet said he was accompanying Zubair and was tweeting from the police van which allegedly had police personnel not wearing name tags.
In the past few months, Zubair has been under intense fire for reporting on dharam sansads being organised across the country and calling out hate speech by Hindutva groups and leaders including Yati Narsinghanand and Anand Swaroop.
On Sunday, Zubair had tweeted about an email from Twitter saying that Twitter had withheld one of his tweets in India. According to Zubair's tweet, the email from Twitter said, "In order to comply with Twitter's obligations under India's local laws, it has withheld this tweet in India under IT Act."
BOOM has learnt that the arrest has been registered by the IFSO (Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations) special cell of the Delhi police which tackles cyber crimes. Sources further said that Zubair has been arrested under section 153 (provocation with intent to cause riot) and section 295A of IPC (hurting religious sentiments).
In a statement, Delhi police said, "Mohammed Zubair had tweeted a questionable image with a purpose to deliberately insult the god of a particular religion. Such tweets were getting retweeted and it appeared that there is a brigade of social media entities, who indulge in insult mongering thereby leading to a possible ramification on communal harmony and is overall against the maintenance of public tranquility."
The statement further added, "During investigation, the conduct of Mohammed Zubair was found questionable, which warranted his custodial interrogation to unravel the conspiracy in this matter."
Last week, Zubair tweeted, "Twitter has received a request from Government of India regarding my Twitter account. It claims that my account violates the law(s) of India.
Previously, Zubair was booked by the Uttar Pradesh police for a tweet calling Hindutva leaders - Yati Yati Narasinghanand, Mahant Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop; hatemongers.