Mohammed Zubair v. State of NCT of Delhi, Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 279/2022

• The Apex Court partly allowed the Petition by transferring all the FIRs filed against the accused to Special Cell, Delhi Police and also enlarged the accused on interim bail in all the pending FIRs or all subsequent FIRs on the same subject matter. Further, the accused was granted liberty to pursue his rights and remedies for quashing of the FIRs before the Delhi High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution or section 482 of the Cr.P.C.

Restrictions on power of arrest conferred to investigation agency.

• Police officers are vested with the power to arrest individuals at various stages of the criminal justice process, including during the course of investigation. However, this power is not unbridled. In terms of Section 41(1)(b)(ii) of the CrPC, the police officer in question must be satisfied that such arrest is necessary to prevent the person sought to be arrested from committing any further offence, for proper investigation of the offence, to prevent the arrestee from tampering with or destroying evidence, to prevent them from influencing or intimidating potential witnesses, or when it is not possible to ensure their presence in court without arresting them.
• Police officers have a duty to apply their mind to the case before them and ensure that the condition(s) stated in Section 41 are met before they conduct an arrest.
• The guidelines laid down in Arnesh Kumar v. State of Bihar, 2014 8 SCC 273 must be followed, without exception. The raison d’être of the powers of arrest in relation to cognizable offences is laid down in Section 41. Arrest is not meant to be and must not be used as a punitive tool because it results in one of the gravest possible consequences emanating from criminal law: the loss of personal liberty. Individuals must not be punished solely on the basis of allegations, and without a fair trial. When the power to arrest is exercised without application of mind and without due regard to the law, it amounts to an abuse of power. The criminal law and its processes ought not to be instrumentalized as a tool of harassment. Section 41 of the CrPC as well as the safeguards in criminal law exist in recognition of the reality that any criminal proceeding almost inevitably involves the might of the state, with unlimited resources at its disposal, against a lone individual.

Restrictions from accessing the twitter as the bail condition.

• Merely because the complaints filed against the petitioner arise from posts that were made by him on a social media platform, a blanket anticipatory order preventing him from tweeting cannot be made. A blanket order directing the Petitioner to not express his opinion – an opinion that he is rightfully entitled to hold as an active participating citizen – would be disproportionate to the purpose of imposing conditions on bail. The imposition of such a condition would tantamount to a gag order against the Petitioner. Gag orders have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech. According to the Petitioner, he is a journalist who is the co-founder of a fact checking website and he uses Twitter as a medium of communication to dispel false news and misinformation in this age of morphed images, clickbait, and tailored videos. Passing an order restricting him from posting on social media would amount to an unjustified violation of the freedom of speech and expression, and the freedom to practice his profession.

Prayer for quashing of FIR

• The prayer for quashing of the FIRs, an essential aspect of the matter which must be noticed at this stage is that the investigation by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police in FIR No 172/2022 pertains to offences of a cognate nature to those which have been invoked in the FIRs which have been lodged before the Police Stations in Uttar Pradesh. Before this court can embark on an enquiry as to whether the FIRs should be quashed, it is appropriate that the petitioner pursues his remedies in accordance with the provisions of Article 226
  of the Constitution and/or section 482 of the CrPC. However, a fair investigative process would require that the entirety of the investigation in all the FIRs should be consolidated and entrusted to one investigating authority.
• Despite the fact that the same tweets allegedly gave rise to similar offences in the diverse FIRs mentioned above, the petitioner was subjected to multiple investigations across the country. Consequently, he would be required to hire multiple advocates across districts, file multiple applications for bail, travel to multiple districts spanning two states for the purposes of investigation, and defend himself before multiple courts, all with respect to substantially the same alleged cause of action.

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