On 4th March, 3 persons were arrested by the Bengaluru Police after a forensic report confirmed that ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans were indeed raised inside the Vidhana Soudha after a Congress candidate Syed Naseer Hussain won the Rajya Sabha elections recently.
Despite the confirmation, Altnews co-founder and ‘fact-checker ’ Mohammad Zubair continues to shield the three arrested accused Ilthaz, Munavar, and Mohammad Shafi. As the forensic report confirmed that pro-Pakistan slogans were raised in the Karnataka state Assembly, several people demanded Zubair’s arrest for peddling lies that ‘Nasir Saab Zindabad’ slogans were raised.
In a long post on X on Tuesday (5th March), Zubair, who sees forensic reports and police statements as universal truth when it suits his agenda, is in this case, repeated his former claims and insinuated that the police arrest and the forensic report are wrong. “Karnataka Police has arrested 3 individuals for allegedly raising ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans in Vidhana Soudha. The Home Minister has also given a statement confirming that Pro-Pakistan sloganeering were raised. Many want @BlrCityPolice to arrest me for my tweet. But 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐦𝐲 𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐬. 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝟏𝟎𝟎% 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨 𝐏𝐫𝐨-𝐏𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 ‘𝐍𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐫 𝐒𝐚𝐚𝐛 𝐙𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐛𝐚𝐝’.
Karnataka Police has arrested 3 individuals for allegedly raising 'Pakistan Zindabad' slogans in Vidhana Soudha. The Home Minister has also given a statement confirming that Pro-Pakistan sloganeering were raised.
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) March 5, 2024
Many want @BlrCityPolice to arrest me for my tweet. But 𝐈… https://t.co/7dk9qUFGHt
The self-proclaimed fact-checker blamed the Kannada news channels for starting ‘false claims’ about the slogans raised after the Congress leader’s Rajya Sabha victory on 27th February.
He then cited the examples of the recent Hanuman flag removal controversy, the Congress government’s Hindu Religious Institutions & Charitable Endowment (Amendment) Bill, 2024 and the current pro-Pakistan slogans controversy to literally reprimand the Congress Party for ‘failing to counter the ‘propaganda’ and registering FIRs against people.
“…This is how, BJP with the help of Local and National Media is winning the Propaganda war and Congress in Karnataka is still clueless on how to counter it,” Zubair added.
Clearly, Zubair’s long rant was nothing more than a face-saving exercise and an attempt to save himself from apologising for blatantly lying and shielding the arrested Congress supporters. It seems like the ‘Chief’ sees himself as someone bigger than the police, FSL and even the government. Zubair ‘standing by’ his statements and refuting the findings of forensic analysis of the contentious video, the fact-checker is telling the people that his opinion is more factual than the forensic report since he cannot abandon his co-religionists in distress.
This, however, is not the first time that Mohammad Zubair, infamous for dog-whistling Islamists against Nupur Sharma, has dismissed even forensic reports confirming pro-Pakistan sloganeering by Muslims in past incidents. Back in the year 2022, a person named Abdul Salam, the former district president of the banned Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI) was arrested by Bhilwara Police for raising ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans in a rally. In that case, Zubair had claimed that the slogans were “SDPI Zindabad” and not “Pakistan Zindabad”. Soon after, Altnews’s co-founder Pratik Sinha dismissed the forensic report of the viral video as ‘faulty’.
“Forensic report, if any, in this case, is faulty if it claims that ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans were raised. It can be clearly heard that the slogan raised was ‘SDPI Zindabad’. An innocent man is being jailed and those who call themselves journalists are on the side of injustice,” Sinha wrote on X on 23rd November 2022.
Much like in the recent ‘Nasir Saab Zindabad’ claim, Alt News had then claimed in their “fact check” of the said video that ‘SDPI Zindabad’ slogans were raised. Even though the SHO of the concerned police station found in the investigation that pro-Pakistan slogans were raised, later the forensic analysis of the video proved the same, Alt News co-founders somehow found even the forensic report as ‘faulty’. An OpIndia report on Alt News and Mohammad Zubair’s whitewashing of pro-Pakistan sloganeering by Muslims can be read here.
