This isn’t the first time when Indian News Media is into controversy. A few days back RepublicTV’s anchor was in trouble due to inappropriate language use on camera. This time its AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair, who has been slapped with 2 FIRs in Delhi and Raipur under the protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act for alleged online harassment of a minor girl. Two other twitter handles namely, @de_real_mask and @syedsarwar20, have also been named in FIR for commenting on the post.
On the 6th of August, Altnews did a fact check for a video of a vehicle driving from a potholed road and was apparently described as Mumbai’s road. Upon investigation of this viral video, AltNews found it out to be a 2017’s video from China. Mohammed Zubair tweeted the fact check report to IPS officer Dipanshu Kabra, who originally shared the viral video.
Sir, This is an old (2017) video from China. 🙂
Here is @AltNews fact check. https://t.co/xUr004HwyJ— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) August 6, 2020
Upon this, a twitter handle @JSINGH2252 made an abusing comment to AltNews.
Mohammed Zubair gave out his reaction to the abusive tweet with a picture of @JSINGH22 with a small girl whose face was blurred out to maintain the privacy.
Hello Jagdish Singh, Does your cute grand daughter know about your part time job of abusing people on social media?
I suggest you to change your profile pic. https://t.co/ZUxuOnaI0v pic.twitter.com/SwBe5i6z4k— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) August 6, 2020
FIR has been logged under the Stringent POCSO act with the claim of doxxing a minor girl in a twitter post. Priyank Kanoongo, chairperson National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, tweeted that the issue has been taken into consideration and necessary actions will be taken. He added that the Twitter India has been given an additional time of 10 days to provide them with relevant information.
The news has been over twitter and a hashtag #istandwithzubair has been tending to support Zubair with Pratik Sinha’s statement in solidarity with him.
Alt News stands by Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear). pic.twitter.com/08ezUdBqII
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) September 6, 2020
Zubair is a technical warrior against the fake news pedlar gang of RSS and is sharply countering hateful posts of BJP IT Cell. This case is said to be a political attack on his repetitive work exposing lies of the Party. He stands firm and called the complaint ‘absolutely frivolous’. “I will be responding to it legally”, he told The Indian Express.
The police’s action came after it received a complaint from the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.
