Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of fact-checking website Alt News, who debunks misinformation in the Indian media, was arrested Monday and remanded overnight in police custody, according to KPS Malhotra, a deputy commissioner in Delhi's Cyber Crime Unit.
In a statement, Malhotra said that Zubair was arrested under two sections of the Indian Penal Code related to maintaining religious harmony.
Zubair often tweets criticism of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party BJP for what he and other critics claim is a crackdown on the rights of the country's roughly 200 million Muslims.
Zubair's lawyer, Kawalpreet Kaur, said the journalist had been summoned by the Delhi High Court for questioning related to a 2020 criminal investigation into his social media posts, from where he had previously been granted protection from arrest. She said that when he responded to the summons, the police arrested him over a separate case. Kaur showed CNN a police complaint in which a Twitter user accused Zubair of insulting Hindus on the platform in 2018, in a post about the renaming of a hotel after a Hindu god. She accused the authorities of not following proper procedure and giving Zubair no notice. Malhotra, the deputy commissioner, did not respond to CNN's questions about whether police had followed proper procedure during the arrest. India is facing a firestorm because of the comments made by the ruling party about Islam. Here's what you need to know Earlier this month, Zubair had criticized the now suspended national spokesperson for the BJP, Nupur Sharma, for making derogatory comments about Islam's Prophet Mohammed, which had set off a diplomatic row. At least 15 Muslim-majority nations condemned Sharma's remarks, several of them summoning India's ambassadors and describing the comments as Islamophobic. Among his recent social media posts is a video showing Hindu extremists attacking Islam, a minority religion in India where nearly 80% of people are Hindu. Zubair's arrest has angered politicians, journalists and news organizations who have demanded his release. The Editors Guild of India said in a statement Tuesday that Alt News' alert vigilance was resented by those who use disinformation as a tool to polarise society and rake nationalist sentiments. An MP from India's opposition Congress party, Shashi Tharoor, said the arrest was an assault on truth. India's few fact-checking services, especially Alt News, are a vital service in our post-truth political environment, rife with disinformation, Tharoor wrote on Monday. To arrest Zubair is an assault on the truth. He should be released immediately. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the Indian authorities to immediately release Zubair and stop harassing him in retaliation for his work.