Delhi court defers bail plea till tomorrow, Zubair lawyer says 2018 post caused no riot | India News

NEW DELHI: A Delhi court on Tuesday deferred the hearing on arrested Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair’s bail application to July 14. He was arrested by Delhi Police on June 17 following a complaint that one of his tweets from 2018 had hurt religious sentiments by showing a Hindu God in poor light.
Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for Zubair, submitted that the tweet didn’t cause any violence or riots in the past four years. “Nothing happened. We went peacefully from 2018 to 2022,” she said. Grover said the image in the tweet was from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s 1983 Hindi movie ‘Kissi Se Na Kehna’, starring Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval. The image was published repeatedly in 2018 in social and print media, she said.
“Thirty-four years later, the movie is being viewed and nothing has happened. It is still available. The State has the power to take down any tweet that may be objectionable. However, the tweets are still there. There is malafide writ large,” the counsel said.
Special public prosecutor Atul Shrivastav, appearing for police, sought time and asked the court to postpone the hearing on Thursday as he was not available before that. Grover objected, arguing that it was the prosecution’s device to delay the proceedings.