Mohamed Zubair, co-founder of India’s leading data control site Alt News, has long been the target of Monti’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for relentlessly debunking fake news and false claims promoted mainly by pro-government groups. This month, the Monti government faced one of its worst diplomatic crises in years, with two BJP officials making derogatory remarks against the Prophet Muhammad and his wife Aisha. More than a dozen Muslim nations, including members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) with whom New Delhi has strong ties, condemned the comments and apologized, forcing the BJP to issue a rare statement saying it “respects” all religions. . Zubair, who has more than half a million followers on Twitter, was probably the first journalist to share a video of the televised discussion on a news channel in which BJP spokeswoman Nupur Sharma commented against the prophet. Although he did not name Sarma or tag her in his tweet, he questioned the news channel, its presenter and the network owner that they allowed the inflammatory comments. “I was angry [with] the news presenter because they gave her a platform. “After she said these words, they did not even stop her. I felt very bad, so when I wrote on Twitter, I did not mention Nupur Sharma’s name or her handle on Twitter, but I was furious with the presenter and the news channel,” he said. Zubair on Al Jazeera during a telephone interview last week. “I wanted to shout at them. “I was actually targeting the news channel.” As the controversy turned into a major diplomatic crisis, many BJP supporters called for Zubair to be arrested using the hashtag #ArrestZubair on Twitter. Earlier this month, police charged the 39-year-old journalist with calling some far-right Hindu monks “haters”. The monks had made inflammatory statements against the Muslims and at least one of them had called for a “genocide” of the minority community. Zubair was also arrested on Monday, five days after Twitter received a request from the Modi government, which claimed his account had violated Indian law. Hailing from Bengaluru in the southern state of Karnataka, Zubair worked as a software engineer with the telecommunications giant Nokia for more than 10 years. In 2017, he co-founded Alt News with Pratik Sinha, another software engineer from Ahmedabad in Modi State, Gujarat. For at least a year, Zubair only helped Sinha run the site while continuing to work for Nokia. But in September 2018, he resigned and joined Alt News as a full-time employee. One of their first successes was when they rejected a false allegation made in a report by the Indian Federal Ministry of Interior showing floodlights along the tense India-Pakistan border. The photo used in the exhibition was from the Spain-Morocco border taken in 2006 by a Spanish photographer. The ministry was forced to issue clarifications. The duo then uncovered numerous false allegations and fake news, often reported by BJP members or their supporters, for which they have faced incessant online trolling and even police cases over the past five years. A photo of a computer screen shows the Alt News homepage [Manish Swarup/AP]
Revelation of anti-Muslim narratives
The Prophet’s controversy was not the first time Zubair had invoked growing hate rhetoric against India’s Muslim minority and Islam. Earlier this year, he posted several videos of a controversial religious event organized by far-right Hindu monks in the northern city of Haridwar, calling on Hindus to take up arms over a Muslim genocide. The viral videos forced police to file an initial intelligence report (FIR) against some speakers at the event and arrested several people, including hard-core monk Yati Narsinghanand, who was later released on bail. In April of this year, Zubair shared another alleged video clip showing Bajrang Muni Das, a controversial monk allegedly threatening to rape Muslims while addressing a crowd in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district. Das was arrested but was soon released on bail. The arrest of Mohammed Zubair, co-founder of @AltNews – an independent fact-finding site, for a satirical 2018 tweet shows that the danger facing human rights defenders has reached a tipping point in India. – Amnesty International (@amnesty) June 28, 2022 Enraged by such revelations, right-wing Hindus have openly called Zubair an “Islamist” and a “jihadist,” accusing him of targeting them and demanding action against him and his website. Alt News has also worked with police to gather evidence in hate crimes. In July last year, dozens of Muslim women in India found themselves “for sale” on a mobile app called Sulli Deals. The app featured photos of dozens of women, including activists and journalists, for an “auction”, describing them as “deals of the day”. In a similar incident last January, photos of more than 100 Muslim women, including prominent actress Shabana Azmi, the husband of an incumbent Delhi Supreme Court judge, journalists, activists and politicians appeared on another app called Bulli B. Sulli and Bulli are derogatory terms for Muslim women, while Bai means housewife. Zubair and his organization investigated the people behind the two applications by searching their social media accounts, the addresses available on the Internet and their Internet history. Because of this project, the former telecommunications engineer says he is being targeted by right-wing Hindu groups and those close to the BJP. Prior to his arrest, Zubair had at least five FIRs against him. In September 2020, two FIRs were filed against him – one in New Delhi and the other in the state capital of Chhattisgarh, Raipur – under the Sexual Offenses Act (POCSO) for alleged “cyberbullying and torture” of a girl. To avoid arrest for politically motivated names, Zubair moved out of his home and lived away from his family for a month before the court assured him he would not be arrested. “Everyone in my family was very scared of me and even told me to quit this job or leave home. “They did not want me to leave the house, but they thought, maybe if we tell him to stop doing this job,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Aimed for his Muslim identity”
Ziya Us Salam, a reporter for The Hindu newspaper and author, told Al Jazeera that Zubair was doing what the mainstream Indian media failed to do. “The media had to shout the lies of the government or various political parties and leaders. He failed to do so. “It was up to people like Zubair and others to expose these things and that is exactly what Zubair did,” he said. Alt News co-founder Sinha says that while he and Zubair have been targeted in many ways, he claims that his colleague “is being targeted mainly for his Muslim identity”. “Zubair is a very dedicated person to his work and principles,” Xinha told Al Jazeera. “The threat is always there and will continue to be there, especially for Zubair because he is a vocal Muslim voice. “People, especially within the BJP and its supporters, hate vocal independent Muslim voices, so they will do everything they can to suppress such a voice.” As the prophet observes controversy, Zubair says the threats against him and his family had increased. “This time, I think the threats are serious because a lot of people felt bad, thinking that India had to bow down. “They felt bad that Noupour was receiving threats and they believe that everything happened because of me and I am the only one responsible for that,” he said. Despite the threats, Zubair said that if he was given a choice between his telecommunications career and his data control, he would choose the latter. “I would like to continue because, whether it is a fact-check or hate speech or hate speech, unfortunately many do not mention it,” he said.
