The Delhi High Court on Monday asked that Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair to move the trial court for release of his electronic devices seized by Delhi Police from his residence in 2022 in the case concerning a tweet posted by him in 2018..In July 2022, Zubair had approached the High Court challenging a Patiala House Court order remanding him to police custody in the case and the order permitting examination and seizure of his laptop. He was subsequently granted bail by a trial court in the case. The case relates to a tweet in which Zubair had shared an image from a 1983 Hindi movie.As per the Delhi Police, the same was against a particular religious community and highly provocative in nature..Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma today disposed of Zubair's plea with the liberty to move an appropriate application before the trial court for release of the devices in question.“It is not specified as to which devices or documents the petitioner is referring to which have been seized by the respondent that are beyond the allegations in FIR. During arguments it was observed that the counsel for petitioner is referring to the mobile phone of the petitioner. In this regard, he may move appropriate application before the concerned area Magistrate who will deal with it as per law,” the Court ordered..Earlier, the Police had told the Court said that Zubair disclosed to them that the laptop and mobile phone used by him for posting the tweet was at his residence in Bengaluru.However, Zubair had argued that the police unlawfully raided his residence to seize the laptop and hard-disk he was using for fact-checking work.He had also denied of having made any disclosure statement to the IO or any other police officer while he was in police custody or at any time during the investigation.As per his plea, he had told the police that he no longer had the mobile phone which he had been using then. The same had been lost and a lost article report was also filed with local police revealing the same, it added.“Further, the tweet in question clearly states it was posted from an Android device (mobile phone), so it has no connection to any laptop,” the plea further said.
