Bengaluru, 23 July

It is celebration time at Mohammed Zubair’s house in Bengaluru. Released from judicial custody after 23 days, Zubair reached home to his family and friends on Friday morning. Outside the house, there is a queue of friends, well-wishers and journalists waiting to meet him. After all, the once relatively low-profile young man who was only known by his twitter handle @zoo_bear has now become a minor celebrity for taking on the state and coming out relatively unscathed.

Salar News caught up with the fact-checker and here are excerpts from the interaction. Since most of the county has been following his ordeal day by day, we begin the interaction by asking him:

Is Mohammed Zubair afraid?

“Not at all,” pat comes the answer from this engineering graduate-turned-fact checker. He launched a parody page on Facebook in 2014 called Unofficial: Subramanian Swamy, which he describes as ‘wannabe champion of free speech, Ph.D from sickulars university’. The page soon gained popularity and brought him in touch with Pratik Sinha, who was running a similar page ‘Truth of Gujarat’, (now a website to stem the subversion of rule of law.)  

Together, the two launched Alt News in 2017, a fact-checking website, whose purpose was to expose fake news which by then was becoming a real problem in the country. Over the last few years, Zubair moved from tweeting about misinformation to tweeting about the increasing hate speech in the country. “I did not speak about hatemongers from just one religion,” he says. “I just tried to expose hatemongers from different groups and the amount of damage they were doing. In fact, in one instance, I even asked the police why an FIR had not been registered suo motu against violence.”

 
Speaking about the current case, Zubair says, “This is not the first time that I have tweeted about hate speech and hatemongers. When I tweeted about the controversial interview, I was not even thinking about Nupur Sharma. I had no idea who she was, except that she was somebody from the ruling party. The point I was trying to make was how could a prominent, mainstream media channel allow this kind of interview to be aired.”

“The role of the media is to check the spread of misinformation, fake news and hatemongering. I was and still am appalled by how mainstream media indulges in spreading misinformation and hatemongering. I was only trying to highlight that,” he says.

However, once the tweet went viral and with the backlash from the world, it became evident that Zubair had stepped on some very big toes. “We at AltNews knew that there would be repercussions. We were prepared for it. But I did not expect it to come this quickly,” he smiles.  

On 24 June, Zubair was sent a notice asking to be present before the Delhi Police in connection with a 2020 case, in which he had already got a stay. Once he presented himself, he was summarily arrested for a 2018 tweet, which was a screengrab from a 1983 Hrishikesh Mukherjee comedy movie - 'Kissi Se Na Kehna’. Zubair was charged with hurting religious sentiments and promoting enmity between different communities.

Once in custody, other cases were foisted on him including those based on the six FIRs registered by the Uttar Pradesh police in Ghaziabad, Chandauli, Lakhimpur, Sitapur and two in Hathras, all of which consisted of him flagging hate speech and hate mongering by prominent people in public.

Then followed the 23 days in judicial custody, which included his being taken to Sitapur as well as being brought to Bengaluru to seize his laptop, which were more of “a cat and mouse game’’ with the authorities trying to keep the fact-checker in jail for as long as possible.

“They even tried to portray that the contributions made by readers to AltNews as payments that had been sent to my personal account. The details of those who had sent in contributions were also obtained by the police,” he said.

Being in jail

Zubair’s jail experience was “nothing like you see in films”. Being a political detainee, he was given the choice of being in a single cell or sharing the cell with others. “I did not want to be alone, so I chose to share my cell with three other people (who were not political prisoners). To begin with, a couple of them were rather upset with me, thanks to what they had been reading about me in the media. But after just one day, one of them came up to me and said, “you are not the kind of person we thought you were. All this is propaganda against you.”

Treated with dignity
There was no hint of mistreatment, he says categorically. “Maybe, it was the high-profile nature of the case, maybe because of the overwhelming support being expressed from people across the country and the world, maybe it was the constant pressure that was being put up by the legal team, but the fact is that I was treated with a lot of dignity and respect. Even if I missed a meal by an hour, they would make sure that I would get another meal,” he says, adding, “Even when I was taken to Sitapur in UP, the officials there told me that they would make sure that no harm would come on him. I am not saying that all political detainees are treated with the same amount of respect and dignity. I was just lucky.”

This did not mean that there were no shenanigans being played elsewhere. Even before the court had passed the judgment of the 14-day judicial custody, KPS Malhotra, Delhi Deputy Commissioner of Police, had tweeted that Zubair would be given a 14-day judicial custody. “There was a lot of activity happening behind the scenes,” he says.

Meeting other political detainees
We were curious to know if Zubair got to meet any other political detainees, more specifically the CAA detainees in Tihar. “No,” said Zubair. The CAA detainees are in Jail No 2, while Zubair was kept in Jail No 4, a block for first time offenders and undertrials. He would’ve liked to meet them, but there was no opportunity for that. He however, managed to meet former minister Sajjan Kumar who has been convicted in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and see a couple of other detainees in other high-profile cases.

Proud Family, Good Friends: “No,” he says. “In fact, they are proud of what I am doing.” Mohammed Zubair’s father Mohammed Rafi said, “Yes, it is a victory for all of us, but we were really worried and concerned for the 20 days Zubair was not with us.”

Zubair is also grateful to his friend and comrade Pratik Sinha. “I want to put it on record that Pratik has been with me every step of the way. He has been handling the legal work, constantly tweeting and making sure that word was out right from the moment I was picked up by the cops. Pratik and his mother Nirjhari Sinha have been a huge support,” he says.

Zubair is happy with the judgment given by Justice Chandrachud. “I would call it a landmark judgment,” he says. Not only did the Supreme Court grant him bail, but it also granted him bail in future FIRs on the same subject, disbanded the SIT set up by the UP government and also released him on a personal bond of Rs 20,000.
But he is most obviously pleased with the fact that he hasn’t been restrained from either writing or tweeting.  

Future Plans
What does the future look like, we ask him as we round up the interview. “I am just waiting to buy a new phone (his old phone is still with the Delhi police and may take up to six months to be returned), install a sim, download Twitter and begin tweeting,” he says with a smile.  -Salar News