The Allahabad High Court, while hearing a plea filed by Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of Alt-News and prominent fact-checker, against an FIR lodged against him over his post on ‘X’ regarding a hate speech by Yati Narsinghanand, orally questioned Zubair for choosing to post the matter on social media rather than filing an FIR against him or approaching the court.
“If this person (referring to Yati Narsinhanand) is acting funny, then instead of going to the police, will you act more funny? Have you lodged an FIR against him? I will look at your conduct. If you don’t like his (Yati) speech, face, you should file an FIR against him,” said a bench of Justice Siddhartha Varma and Justice Ram Manohar Narayan Mishra.
The High Court orally remarked that glancing through Zubair’ post on X showed that he was trying to create social unrest.
Zubair told the HC that he was simply exercising his freedom of speech by referring to the hate speech of Yati Narsinghanand and highlighting his conduct.
The Senior Counsel representing Zubair further stated that not just Zubair but many new articles and social media accounts had posted about the same issue, and Zubair had not said anything different, Live Law reported.
However, Justice Varma orally observed that it was not appropriate for Zubair to go to ‘X’ and post about the speech, the legal website reported.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
