‘Violates Law of India’: Alt News Fact-Checker Apprised by Twitter

Indian law enforcement claimed that one of Zubair Mohammed’s tweets from March violated the Indian law.

Social media platform Twitter on Thursday, 10 June, sent a notice to Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News, a news website working towards tackling misinformation in the country. As per the notice, the Indian law enforcement claimed that one of his tweets was in violation of Indian laws.

(Photo: Arnica Kala/The Quint)

Social media platform Twitter on Thursday, 10 June, sent a notice to Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of Alt News, a news website working towards tackling misinformation in the country.

As per the notice, the Indian law enforcement claimed that one of his tweets from March 2021 was in violation of Indian laws.

On Friday, Zubair shared a screenshot of the notice and stated: “Twitter might not have taken any action against my tweet. But they have restricted my Twitter reach after multiple such notices.”

“Is government allergic to facts?” he asked.

The tweet flagged by the Indian law enforcement was a fact-check of a video, which was being widely circulated by several news outlets and BJP supporters, ahead of the Assam Assembly elections. It falsely claimed that All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) Chief Badruddin Ajmal had made inflammatory comments regarding the establishment of an Islamic state.

Zubair’s tweet indicated that Ajmal had made no such remarks, and the video was clipped from another, longer video.

He also shared that he has been the recipient of at least 11 such notices from Twitter Legal since April 2020, and several of them were requests from the Indian law enforcement.

Later in the day, the journalist shared another tweet that exhibited his Twitter reach was being impacted. “Got four messages today saying their Twitter accounts automatically unfollowed me and other accounts. Strange!” Zubair wrote in a post.