A single-judge bench of Justice Anup Jairam Bhambhani, hearing a plea by Zubair challenging an FIR registered against him for a tweet by him in response to an abusive message with username Jagdish Singh, asked the police to file a status report on the action taken against the person.
“You went hammer and tongs against him (Zubair). But the case has now ended in a whimper, as it should have… because there was no evidence. But what action have you taken against this man?” the court said, pulling up the police.
Police’s counsel said it was conscious of the directions of the Supreme Court on the action to be taken in hate speech cases and assured appropriate action will be taken in the matter.
The judge then granted six weeks’ time to the police to file a status report and posted the matter for hearing next on September 14.
The police had booked the petitioner and to quash the case, the latter moved the high court.
The judge had earlier noted that the police has not named the petitioner in the charge sheet because it did not find any criminality against him, and asked if they have taken the case to a logical end.
“What did you do about this gentleman called Jagdish Singh. My question is if you found nothing against this man (Zubair), what did you do about the person who put out those offensive tweets,” the sane bench had asked.
The case stems from an incident which took place in 2020, wherein the petitioner had called out Singh through his tweet for being a troll.
Zubair had retweeted his display picture, which featured his daughter but after pixelating/blurring her image.
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”.
This was followed by two FIRs against Zubair a month later in Delhi and Raipur, under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO Act) for allegedly “threatening and torturing” a minor girl on Twitter.
The court had said: “Somebody (Jagdish Singh) starts a storm and you (Delhi Police) just say this person’s (Zubair’s) name is not in charge sheet therefore… I want to see if things are coming to a logical closure.”
