New Delhi: The Indian Foreign Ministry on Thursday reacted sharply to the German foreign ministry’s comments on fact-checker Mohammed Zubair’s arrest and described it as an internal matter of India and called Germany’s remarks as “unhelpful”. “This is our internal matter. The matter is before the court. Our legal system is independent. Any comment on it is unhelpful. It’s not right,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said during a press conference. The Foreign Ministry of Germany had raised questions about the arrest of Mohammed Zubair and ‘took a dig at India’s calling itself the largest democracy.’
“Free reporting is beneficial to any society and restrictions are a cause for concern. Journalists should not be persecuted and imprisoned for what they say and write. We are indeed aware of this specific case and our embassy in New Delhi is monitoring it very closely,” a German foreign ministry spokesperson had said.
The spokesperson also said that the European Union had an ongoing human rights dialogue with India and “the freedom of expression and freedom of the press” are a focus of those discussions.
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“India describes itself as the world’s largest democracy. So one can expect democratic values like freedom of expression and freedom of the press to be given the necessary space there,” asserted the German spokesperson.
Zubair, the co-founder of the fact-checker website Alt News, was arrested by the Delhi Police on June 27 over a 2018 tweet. A Twitter user complained about a 2018 tweet by Zubair. He has accused Zubair of hurting religious sentiments.