After Zubair’s arrest Twitter handle supporting him is from Pakistan

New Delhi, July 02: The Delhi police have added charges of criminal conspiracy and destruction of evidence in the case against fact checker Mohammad Zubair. The police has added Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) and Section 204 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Meanwhile Zubair's council has filed a bail application.

During the social media analysis the police noticed that a Twitter handle supporting Zubair after his arrest were from Pakistan, and mostly middle eastern countries like UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait. A total of Rs 2,31,933 has been received by Pravda Media, the parent company of Alt News.

News agency ANI said that the police learnt from the analysis of the reply received from Razorpay Payment gateway that various transactions with phone numbers and IP addresses were from outside India from locations like Bangkok, Manama, North-Holland, Singapore, Victoria, New York, England and Riyadh Region.

Locations also included Baladīyat ad Dawḩah, Sharjah, Stockholm, Aichi, Central, Western & Eastern Provinces of UAE, Abu Dhabi, Washington DC, Kansas, New Jersey, Ontario, California, Texas, Lower Saxony, Bern, Dubai, Uusimaa, and Scotland.

Zubair was arrested by the Delhi Police under Sections 295 and 153A. He was sent to four days police remand. Formatting gadgets and non-cooperation in the investigation became the ground for his arrest, Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO)'s Deputy Commissioner of Police K P S Malhotra said.

The Delhi Police Special Cell which arrested Zubair has also been looking into the donations to the website Alt News. The police is said to have found Rs 50 lakh deposited in the website's account in the past three months, a Hindustan Times report said. It also said that the officers were investigating who is making the donations and if they are from across the border.

We will also see if the donations are not being used to convert black money into white, the report while citing officials said.

Further the Delhi police is also looking to bust the social media brigade which Zubair has. It appears that his tweets are planned and pushed in a concerted manner following which they are amplified by an army of people. If these are bots then who is paying these bots and we are digging deeper into the network which amplifies his tweets, the report also said.

The police also said that Zubair is not cooperating with the investigation and refused to hand over his electronic devices. He had also formatted his phone they said.