NEW DELHI, July 8: The Supreme Court on Friday granted stay against arrest of Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan and also given limited interim bail to Alt News co-founder Mohammad Zubair in the Sitapur case in Uttar Pradesh allegedly for insulting religious sentiments.
Zubair will however remain in judicial custody in a separate FIR registered by the Delhi Police. This case had not come up before the Supreme Court. The court was only concerned with the U.P. case.
The Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan police are looking for Rohit Ranjan for airing a doctored clip of the former Congress president Rahul Gandhi to present him as a sympathiser of the killers of the Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal. The TV presenter had approached the Supreme Court requesting protection from “any coercive action” and that cases against him be clubbed.
The top court also issued notice, including to the centre through the office of the Attorney General on Ranjan’s plea in which he also sought security for himself, his family members, and his colleagues associated with the programme.
Ranjan had played a video in which Rahul Gandhi described those attacking a party office in Kerala as children and said he had no ill-will against them. However, the channel said he had made the comment about the killers of Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal who was killed over a social media post defending former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s controversial remark on Prophet Muhammad. Ranjan and the network later apologised.
But on Tuesday, a police team from Chhattisgarh reached Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad to arrest the anchor from his home, prompting him to tweet an SOS to the police in the BJP-ruled state. Following a dramatic fight among the police officers of the two states outside his home, he was arrested by the Noida Police and released on bail the same night.
Since then, he has not been found by the Chhattisgarh cops who camped out in the state and visited his office too. Chhattisgarh Police officials said they are exploring legal options against counterparts in Noida and Ghaziabad.
In the case of Mohammad Zubair, the UP police had registered a case against him on the basis of a complaint that he had tweeted “offensive words towards mahants of religious places symbolising our faith and thereby hurting our religious sentiments.”
Zubair had appealed to stay the investigation into the “absurd” charges and subsequently quash the FIR registered at Sitapur. The Supreme Court while granting interim bail also made it clear that Zubair will not put up any tweets or tamper with evidence, electronic or otherwise.
The order will also not impede the investigation, seizure of evidence in the Sitapur case. The Vacation Bench said the case will now come up before a Regular Bench when the court reopens.
(Manas Dasgupta)