New Delhi: A bench of Justices Mahesh Chandra Tripathi and Prashant Kumar of the Allahabad high court recused themselves from hearing fact-checker Mohammed Zubair’s plea challenging the UP police’s FIR against him.
An FIR accusing Zubair of promoting enmity between religious communities and provoking Muslims against Hindu extremist leader Yati Narsinghanand was filed by Narsinghanand’s aide last month.
The UP police on November 27 told the court that the offence of endangering India’s sovereignty, unity and integrity as under Section 152 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) had been added to the FIR against Zubair.
The bench on Tuesday (December 3) recused itself within 20 minutes of the hearing and directed that the case be listed before another bench, LiveLaw reported.
Challenging the FIR, Zubair in his plea had contended that his post on X did not call for violence against the controversial leader, but simply alerted the police about his actions and sought legal recourse against him. This could not amount to promoting disharmony or ill-will between two religious groups, he argued.
The plea also challenged the invocation of defamation under BNS on grounds that posting Narsinghanand’s own videos, already available in the public domain, and demanding action on them is not tantamount to defamation.
His writ petition also said that when Narsinghanand allegedly made the derogatory statements against Prophet Muhammad, he was out on bail in a hate speech case and his bail conditions said he was not to make statements promoting communal disharmony.
The FIR against Zubair was lodged by Udita Tyagi, general secretary of the Yati Narsinghanand Saraswati Trust. It claims that by posting a video clip of an old programme of Narsinghanand’s on October 3, Zubair intended to provoke violence by Muslims against him.
LiveLaw reported that a public interest litigation seeking action against Narsinghanand and barring him from raising questions about the Prophet pr Quran is pending before the same court.
