The Supreme Court on Tuesday, 12 July extended the interim bail granted to Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in the 'hatemongers' case lodged by the Uttar Pradesh Police case in Sitapur till further orders of the court, said the matter would be listed on 7 September for final disposal.
The UP Police have been given four weeks to file their reply to Zubair's plea seeking quashing of the First Information Report (FIR) registered against him on 1 June over his tweet calling Yati Narsinghanand, Bajrang Muni, and Anand Swaroop "hatemongers."
The matter was briefly heard by Justices DY Chandrachud and AS Bopanna. Senior advocate Colin Gonsalves appeared for Zubair in the hearing.
The Supreme Court had previously granted five-day interim bail to Zubair on Friday, 8 July. The vacation bench which heard the matter specified that this interim bail pertained only to the ‘hatemongers’ case FIR.
This meant that even though Zubair got bail in the hatemongers case, he was not set free as he remained in judicial custody in a case brought by the Delhi Police against him for a separate, four-year-old tweet.
A court in Lakhimpur Kheri also remanded him to 14-days' judicial custody in a separate case by the UP Police regarding one of his old tweets.