Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair released from Tihar after SC grants interim bail

New Delhi: Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair was released from Tihar on Wednesday night, hours after being granted interim bail by the Supreme Court in all FIRs lodged in Uttar Pradesh against him for alleged hate speech, prison officials said. Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27 for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through his tweets. Multiple FIRs were lodged against him in UP - two in Hathras and one each in Sitapur, Lakhimpur Kheri, Muzaffarnagar, Ghaziabad, and at Chandauli police station - on similar charges.

"Mohd Zubair has been released from Tihar," a senior jail official confirmed. The Supreme Court, earlier in the day, ordered the release of Zubair on interim bail, saying "exercise of the power of arrest must be pursued sparingly" and transferred all the cases in UP to Delhi.

The court said, "it finds no reason or justification for the deprivation of his liberty to persist any further" and ordered disbanding of the SIT, constituted by the UP police.

The Supreme Court had ordered his release by 6 pm, but he walked out of jail only at 9 pm after paperwork and other formalities were completed. He has been granted bail in all seven cases filed against him.

The Supreme Court also noted that he was granted bail in the Delhi case, but it had not been "sufficient to secure his personal liberty" as he had been slapped with "successive FIRs". In the last hearing, the Supreme Court had called out the "vicious cycle" of interim bail in one case and arrest in another case.

The top court also disbanded a special probe in UP against Mohammed Zubair and transferred all UP cases to Delhi. The judges also rejected the Uttar Pradesh government's request that Mohammed Zubair be "stopped from putting out tweets".