Journalist Mohammed Zubair granted interim bail by Supreme Court of India

Journalist and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair has been granted interim bail by Supreme Court of India on Wednesday (July 20). The bail has been granted in all FIRs in Uttar Pradesh against him. The FIRs were filed for his alleged derogatory tweets. The court said that it found no reason or justification for deprivation of his liberty. The top Indian court said that "the existence of the power of arrest must be distinguished from the exercise of arrest and the exercise of the power of arrest must be pursued sparingly."

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant, and AS Bopanna said that fairness to Zubair would require that the entirety of the investigation into all the FIRs be clubbed together. The court said it should be one and the same investigating authority that would handle all these cases.

It said "the overlap between the allegations in the FIRs, emanating as they do, from the tweets of the petitioner (Zubair) would only go to emphasise the need for a consolidated as opposed to a piecemeal investigation by a diverse set of law enforcement agencies."

"Having found from the record that the petitioner has been subjected to a fairly sustained investigation by the Delhi police, we find no reason or justification for the deprivation of the liberty of the petitioner to persist any further. Consequently, we are of the view that the petitioner shall be released on interim bail in each of the FIRs which form the subject matter of these proceedings under Article 32 of the Constitution", it said.

The court said that Zubair was to released from the jail 'no later than 6 pm' on Wednesday after presentation of the bail bonds.

The bench directed that the SIT which has been constituted by the UP police shall be rendered "redundant and shall be disbanded".

The detailed order was not immediately uploaded on the Supreme Court website but the operative part was.

(With inputs from agencies)

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