NEW DELHI: Mohammad Zubair on Monday denied before the Delhi High Court that he posted content on Twitter against Hindu deity in 2018, which triggered religious sentiments, to gain popularity. Refuting the allegations leveled against him, the Alt News’ co-founder said before the court that the investigating agency has attributed ‘false and concocted theories’ to him in the name of ‘disclosure statements’, which is a ‘subversion of the rule of law’ and made a ‘mockery of due process’, and the search and seizure from his residence were carried out with mala fide reasons.
He said before the court that he has not made any disclosure statement to the agency in relation to the recovery of certain devices and any such disclosure is ‘wholly false, wrong, concocted and inadmissible in law’. The law enforcement agency, in its status report filed in September this year, had informed the court that during Zubair’s police custody remand, one laptop, two invoices and a hard disk were recovered from his Bengaluru residence based on a disclosure statement that was admissible under the Indian Evidence Act and has to be looked upon at the time of trial. The status report was filed in response to a plea by Mohammad Zubair against his arrest and search and seizure exercise in the case.
“It is asserted that I did not make any such disclosure as the tweet in question dates back to 2018 and I clearly and specifically told the police/investigating officer that I no longer have the mobile phone which I had been using in 2018 at my residence as the same was lost,” Zubair said in his affidavit in reply to the status report.
The Alt News co-founder said that he was a fact checker who posted content on social media to debunk fake news and his work was not limited to particular kind of posts. “I deny that in order to gain popularity I post content that triggers religious sentiments.” Zubair submitted that the admissibility of the recoveries during police investigation remains are wholly illegal.