The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to list Alt News co-founder and prominent Muslim journalist Mohammed Zubair’s bail plea for urgent hearing on Friday, subject to the Chief Justice of India assigning it.
“There are death threats against him… People have said that they will kill him. We are worried about his safety,” Zubair’s lawyer, Colin Gonsalves, argued for urgent listing.
Asking the top court to hear the plea at 2 pm today, Gonsalves said, “Please see the urgency.”
Justice Indira Banerjee ordered that the matter be listed tomorrow “subject to clearance by the Chief Justice of India”.
“His job is to fact check news. There are death threats against him and people who deliver hate speech says that they might kill him,” Gonsalves said while arguing.
Zubair’s plea is an appeal seeking to quash the FIR against him in Sitapur and also seeks bail in the same case.
Zubair, one of the prominent Muslim journalists in India and a vocal critic of Narendra Modi’s government, was arrested on 25 June and is in judicial custody on charges of hurting religious sentiments for a tweet that he had posted in March 2018. The charges of violating foreign funding norms along with criminal conspiracy and causing the disappearance of evidence were added in the case against Zubair on July 2.
