An Indian court on Friday granted bail to Muslim journalist Mohammad Zubair who was accused of insulting Hindu religious leaders on Twitter, after his arrest last month raised concerns over media freedom.

According to the Hindustan Times, Zubair, who co-founded fact-checking website Alt News and regularly tweets on the increasing marginalisation of India’s Muslim minority, was granted bail by a New Delhi court against surety bonds of INR50,000.

The journalist will, however, stay in judicial custody until he gets bail in remaining cases. Hindustan Times reports that there are six cases against the Muslim journalist.

In its verdict, reserved yesterday, the court remarked that “the voice of dissent is necessary for a healthy democracy” and political parties were open to criticism.

Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala observed that a “democracy can neither work nor prosper unless people go out and share their views”, a report published in the Indian Express stated.

“Hindu religion is one of the oldest religions and most tolerant. The followers of the Hindu religion are also tolerant. Hindu religion is so tolerant that its followers proudly name their institution/organisation/facilities in the name of their Holy God or Goddess. A large number of Hindus proudly name their children in the name of their Holy God and Goddess,” the court said.

At the outset of the hearing, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava opposed Zubair’s bail stating that he wrote the words before 2014 and after 2014 in his tweet to point out a political party as the year 2014 was when “Modi had come” to power and that this was done to “incite people of the other side and create ill will”.

To this, the court remarked that in “Indian democracy the political parties are open for their criticism”.

“The political parties are not shying away from the public to face the criticism of its policies. Therefore, merely criticism of any political parties is not justified to invoke Section 153A and 295A of the IPC,” it said.

Section 153A of the Indian Penal Code is related to deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs, while 295A relates to promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence.

“Undoubtedly free speech is the proper foundation of a democratic society. A free exchange of ideas, dissemination of information without restraints, dissemination of knowledge, airing of different viewpoints, debating and forming one’s own views and expressing them, are the basic indicator of a free society,” the court added.

Zubair’s arrest

Delhi police had arrested Zubair in June after accusing him of insulting religious beliefs on Twitter.

The FIR registered by the UP police was based on a complaint by Bhagwan Sharan, who identifies himself as the district head of Rashtriya Hindu Sher Sena, The Wire had reported.

According to the publication, a UP court had sent Zubair on 14-day judicial remand. It had also rejected the journalist’s bail application later and sent him to police custody from July 8 to 14.

Subsequently, Zubair had approached the Supreme Court to quash the FIR registered by the UP police on July 7.

On July 8, India’s top court had granted interim bail to the journalist in a case related to describing a group of Hindu religious leaders as “hate mongers”.

Ruling on the complaint, a two-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court had granted Zubair five days interim bail, and also ordered him to refrain from tweeting and tampering with any electronic evidence.

Zubair had played a role in drawing attention to incendiary remarks about Prophet Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) recently made by Nupur Sharma, a former spokesperson for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that sparked widespread protests across the Islamic world.

Amnesty International had earlier said India was “targeting” Zubair for his “crucial work” combating disinformation and calling out discrimination against minorities.