The Chhattisgarh High Court was informed on Wednesday that the case registered against Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offices (POCSO) Act for tweeting a picture of a child, was closed in 2023. .The submission was made by a State counsel before the bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Arvind Kumar Verma during the hearing of a quashing petition moved by Zubair in 2020."The Ld. State Counsel has pointed out that as per the instructions received by him way back on 12.09.2023 from the concerned police station, a closure report has been filed on 08.09.2023," the Court recorded in the order while disposing of Zubair's petition. .The case dates back to 2020, when Zubair in his tweet had called out one Jagdish Kumar on X (Twitter) for calling him a 'jihadi'. Zubair had retweeted Singh's display picture, which featured his granddaughter. However, the picture had been blurred in the post by Zubair.The tweet read,“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.”Subsequently, Zubair was booked by the Delhi Police under the POCSO Act. A similar case against him was registered by the Raipur Police. .In October 2020, the Chhattisgarh High Court had ordered a police station in Raipur to not take any coercive action against Zubair. A similar interim relief had earlier been granted to Zubair by the Delhi High Court.Subsequently, the Delhi Police gave a clean chit to Zubair and later closed the case against him.The case took an interesting turn in 2023, when the Delhi High Court asked the Delhi Police to explain what action it had taken against the Twitter user who had abused Zubair. The Court later asked the user Jagdish Singh to post an apology on his X (Twitter) handle..[Read Order]
