The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The Chhattisgarh police has filed its closure report in the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences case that had been filed against Alt News fact-checker and journalist Mohammed Zubair against a post he wrote on X, the state government recently told the Chhattisgarh high court.
The case was filed in 2020, in what Zubair has said was a misuse of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights’ official position.
LiveLaw has reported that the Chhattisgarh state counsel made the submission before a bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Arvind Kumar Verma.
The court has now disposed of Zubair’s plea against the first information report lodged against him under Section 67 (punishment for publishing or transmitting obscene material in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act, Section 509B (sexual harassment by electronic mode) of the Indian Penal Code, and Section 12 (punishment for committing sexual harassment upon a child) of the POCSO Act.
Zubair had been booked after he posted on Twitter (now X) asking one Jagdish Singh if it was appropriate for him to use derogatory language – including insulting Zubair with the word ‘jihadi’ – from a profile where he has a photograph featuring his granddaughter.
“Hello Jagdish Singh. Does your cute granddaughter know about your part time job of abusing people on social media? I suggest you to change your profile pic.”, Zubair had written, according to LiveLaw, blurring the face of the minor girl.
Singh complained to the NCPCR, which then wrote to Delhi and Raipur police. The latter filed an FIR, which Zubair challenged.
In October 2020, the high court had ordered that no coercive action should be taken against Zubair and in 2024, asked Jagdish Singh to apologise to Zubair on X.
“In this case, [former head of the NCPCR Priyank Kanoongo] misused their official position and ran a propaganda against me by writing to Delhi and Raipur police alleging that my tweet amounted to torture and harassment of a minor girl. But last year, The Delhi Court had asked the person who filed a case against me to [publicly apologise] to me instead. And Now Chattisgarh police filed a closure report and cleared my name,” Zubair posted on X on April 2.
He also wrote that this puts the number of quashed FIRs at two out of the 10 filed against him.
“Truth can be troubled, but not defeated. Justice prevails!” he wrote.
Zubair’s unperturbed fact-checking of government- and Bharatiya Janata Party-led vitriol online has made him the particular target of Hindutva and pro-Hindutva commentators.
Uttar Pradesh police have filed an FIR against him over his posts regarding hate speech-enthusiast Yati Narsinghanand.