Alt News cofounder says Delhi police attributed ‘concocted, false disclosures’ to him: LiveLaw

Alt News cofounder Mohammed Zubair has said he made no disclosure statements to the Delhi police over his arrest for a tweet posted in 2018, and that the police were using “concocted, wholly false” disclosures instead, LiveLaw reported today. Zubair submitted a response in this regard to the police’s status report filed last month. 

Zubair was arrested by the Delhi police on June 27 over the tweet he had posted four years ago. He subsequently faced six cases in Uttar Pradesh. The Supreme Court granted him bail in all cases on July 20.

The Delhi police in September told the high court that Zubair’s phone and laptop, which had been seized from his Bengaluru home, were being analysed at the Forensics Science Laboratory in Delhi. The police said Zubair “disclosed that the laptop and mobile phone used by him for posting the alleged content” were at his Bengaluru residence.  

Zubair said this was untrue, and that the police attributed “false” disclosure statements to him which are a “subversion of law and makes a mockery of due process”.

“The statement attributed to me as a disclosure is manifestly wrong, false and concocted, to fabricate a non-existent ground to unlawfully raid my residence and seize my laptop and hard-disk, which I use for my journalistic fact-checking work,” he said. “The said search and seizure from my residence was thus carried out with malafide reasons extraneous to the need of investigation.”

He also denied that he “triggers religious sentiments” in his tweets for “popularity”, saying that as a fact-checker, his work is to debunk fake news and misinformation. 

He also said as much in an interview to Newslaundry shortly after his release. At the time, Zubair said the UP police while questioning him had asked why he only fact-checks information “pertaining to UP and not other states”.

“Haan, thoda whataboutery tha,” he told Newslaundry. “Why do you only fact-check Hindus?...Why do you always tweet about UP, and why not Kerala or Tamil Nadu? I mean I told them that it’s good for the state’s law and order machinery if we are debunking misinformation related to UP.”

Read the entire interview here.