The Twitter account that had raised a complaint against Alt News co-founder Mohd. Zubair’s 2018 tweet on the social media website, which led to the case against the scribe and his eventual arrest by the Delhi Police on Monday, has ceased to exist as of Wednesday evening.
This comes a day after Mr. Zubair’s counsel Vrinda Grover had raised doubts about the account and the motives of the person operating it while arguing against the extension of his police custody in a Delhi court.
The account was operating under the handle “@balajikijaiin” and went by the name “Hanuman Bhakt”. It had been created in October 2021 but the first tweet posted from the account appeared on June 19 this year, based on which an officer of the Delhi Police Special Cell’s IFSO (Intelligence Fusion Strategic Operations) Unit had registered the FIR against Mr. Zubair on June 20. Till then, this was the only post made by this account.
Ms. Grover had made these submissions before a city court on Tuesday, raising suspicion on how the police “magically picked up” this particular tweet to note the four-year-old post of Mr. Zubair’s which is at the centre of the case for which he has now been arrested.
Mr. Zubair’s March 2018 tweet had posted an image from a Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) approved 1983 Hindi film Kissi Se Na Kehna, which showed a hotel’s name being changed from “Honeymoon Hotel” to “Hanuman Hotel”. Mr. Zubair had posted this image with the text: “Before 2014: Honeymoon Hotel; After 2014: Hanuman Hotel”. While the police submitted that Mr. Zubair had allegedly “edited” the image, Ms. Grover had said the image in question was not manipulated in any way and was taken from the film.
Questioning the motivation of the person operating the “Hanuman Bhakt” account, which had revived the 2018 tweet by retweeting it this year, Ms. Grover had said, “If an anonymous Twitter handle chose to create mischief after four years those reasons should be investigated I think.”
The police, through the substitute additional public prosecutor, had then rebutted this line of argument by saying, “It is not anonymous. His details are there. No one can open a Twitter account without providing their details.”
Two more posts
Apart from the first post, at least two more posts were made from this account — one that asked people to follow him on the social media website (made at 5:06 pm on June 27) and the other one calling for action against Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha (made at 12:51 am on June 28) — before it was deactivated.
The latest tweet, calling for Mr. Sinha to be prosecuted, followed a similar pattern. It had picked up a 2015 tweet of his and retweeted it, tagging the Delhi Police IFSO Unit’s Twitter handle and asking it to “kindly take action” for “openly hurting religious freedom of Hindus”.
A senior police officer told The Hindu that the activities of the Twitter account (@balajikijaiin) were not being investigated.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (IFSO) K.P.S Malhotra said teams of the Cyber Cell, along with Mr. Zubair, will leave for Bengaluru on Thursday to recover the mobile phone and other electronic gadgets from his residence.
