UP police forms SIT to investigate cases against Alt News founder

The Uttar Pradesh Police Tuesday constituted a Special Investigation Team (SIT) for a "transparent" and expeditious probe into cases lodged against Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair in various districts of the state, a senior official said.

The SIT will be headed by Inspector General (Prisons) Preetinder Singh while IG Amit Verma will be its member, Additional Director General (Law & Order) Prashant Kumar said, adding they will be assisted by three deputy superintendents of police/inspectors.

The SIT has been asked to conduct the probe expeditiously and submit a charge sheet in the court, Kumar said.

Separate FIRs have been lodged against Zubair in Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Ghaziabad, Muzaffarnagar and Hathras districts on charges of hurting religious feelings, making sarcastic remarks on news anchors, disrespecting Hindu gods and inflammatory posts, officials here said.

The Sitapur FIR was lodged on June 1 under Indian Penal Code section 295A (deliberate and malicious act intended to outrage religious feelings) and section 67 of the IT Act on a complaint by Hindu Sher Sena district president Bhagwan Sharan.

Sharan had filed the complaint for a tweet by Zubair in which he allegedly called three Hindutva leaders- Yati Narasinghanand Saraswati, Bajrang Muni and Anand Swaroop -- "hate-mongers".

This case has reached the Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the court extended till further orders the interim bail granted to Zubair. A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna was told by Additional Solicitor General SV Raju, appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government, that it wants to file a counter affidavit to Zubair's plea seeking quashing of the FIR lodged in the case.

In Lakhimpur, the case was lodged on November 25 last year by Ashish Katiyar, a reporter for a private news channel.

"In his complaint, Katiyar had accused Zubair of misleading people through his tweet about his channel," he said.

Similarl, FIR was lodged against Zubair in other districts.

Earlier, the Supreme Court extended till further orders the interim bail of Zubair in a case lodged against him in the Sitapur district of Uttar Pradesh for allegedly outraging religious sentiments.