Co-Founder of Fact-Checking Website Arrested in India – The Diplomat

The arrest of Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of AltNews, a fact-checking information web site, in New Delhi on June 27 for allegedly hurting spiritual sentiments and inciting enmity is yet one more occasion of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Get together (BJP) authorities cracking down on critics and people talking up towards Hindutva violence.

Based on police officers, Zubair was arrested on a grievance by an nameless Twitter person, who goes by the title Hanuman Bhakt relating to a tweet by Zubair in 2018.

In that tweet, Zubair shared a screengrab from the 1983 Hindi movie Kissi Se Na Kehna of the Hanuman Lodge, which beforehand glided by the title “Honeymoon Lodge.” (Hanuman is the title of a Hindu deity.)

“Earlier than 2014: Honeymoon Lodge, After 2014: Hanuman Lodge,” Zubair tweeted, an indirect reference to the Hindu nationalists coming to energy in 2014 and the large change that India has undergone since.

“Linking our God Hanuman ji with honeymoon is a direct insult of Hindus as a result of he’s brahmchari [bachelor]. @DCP_CCC_Delhi kindly take motion towards this man,” the complainant, Hanuman Bhakt tweeted, tagging the Delhi Police.

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Primarily based on this grievance, Delhi Police registered a case towards Zubair for tweeting “a questionable picture with a objective to intentionally insult the god of a selected faith,” police probing the case stated.

Whereas a tweet posted 4 years in the past could have offered the federal government with a useful excuse to arrest Zubair, current occasions usually tend to have triggered the police motion.

On Might 26, BJP nationwide spokesperson Nupur Sharma made derogatory feedback about Islam and Prophet Mohammad. Her remarks set off protests worldwide and a number of other governments within the Muslim world lodged sturdy protests and condemned the Indian authorities, with some even demanding a public apology.

It was Zubair’s tweets that made Sharma’s remarks go viral, drawing international consideration and outrage. The outrage pressured the Narendra Modi authorities to distance itself from Sharma’s feedback, and the BJP to droop her.

Within the month since, Hindutva trolls have focused Zubair on Twitter and threatened him and his household. They’ve drawn consideration to his earlier tweets, claimed these harm their spiritual sentiments and known as for police motion, Hanuman Bhakt’s tweet amongst them.

Since 2017 when AltNews was based, the web site has completed stellar work in combating faux information in India. “It’s obvious that AltNews’ alert vigilance was resented by those that use disinformation as a device to polarise society and rake nationalist sentiments,” the Editors Guild of India (EGI) stated in a press release following Zubair’s arrest, a reference to Hindu right-wing web sites and trolls who’ve been concentrating on liberal Indians for his or her critique of the Modi authorities and its appeasement of Hindutva radicals.

Zubair was amongst those that had been trolled for laying naked faux information and for calling out the godi (lapdog) media, these sections of the media which can be the Modi authorities’s cheerleaders.

Because the BJP got here to energy in 2014, trolling, intimidation and police actions towards journalists has grown phenomenally. Journalists who’re essential of the Modi authorities are threatened with rape and homicide. Police have hardly ever offered them with safety. Fairly the police usually acts hand-in-glove with the ruling get together and Hindutva activists to file circumstances towards journalists.

Among the many victims of the federal government’s hounding of journalists are Siddique Kappan and Farhad Shah. Kappan was on his approach to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh to report on the gang rape and homicide of a Dalit lady when he was arrested for a narrative he by no means bought to jot down. He stays in jail since late 2020, charged underneath the stringent Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act.

As for Shah, a Kashmiri journalist and editor of Kashmirwalla, he has been jailed underneath the Public Security Act, a preventive detention regulation underneath which a detainee could be stored in jail for 2 years with out costs being framed or a trial, for allegedly “glorifying terrorism, spreading faux information & inciting common public for creating L&O [law and order] conditions.”

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Zubair is the newest sufferer of the federal government’s makes an attempt to silence critics.

Mockingly, Zubair’s arrest coincided with Prime Minister Modi’s participation within the G-7 summit in Germany, the place leaders of the G-7 and 5 associate international locations together with India dedicated to “defending the liberty of expression and opinion on-line and offline and guaranteeing a free and unbiased media.”

“Are the Union House Ministry and Delhi Police not on the identical web page with the Prime Minister on the dedication to freedom of expression?” the EGI requested, demanding Zubair’s quick launch.