Alt News: The small fact-checking unit that made India’s Prophet Muhammad row go global

On 27 May, when Indian news channel Times Now held a debate over the issue of a disputed mosque site in northern India, it might have just been another chaotic day of shouting and barbed comments among the panellists on the right-wing channel.

That was until a clip of one moment in the debate was tweeted out by fact-checker Mohammad Zubair, 39, a former telecoms engineer who is part of the 13-member team at Alt News tasked with tackling the rampant disinformation and hate speech spread online and through the country’s broadcast media.

The clip showed a spokesperson for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) making derogatory remarks about the Prophet Muhammad as she vied to be heard over a Muslim panellist. The moment passed quickly and was not directly addressed by Times Now’s anchor Navika Kumar, and – though shocking – might easily have been lost in the noise of all the other hate-filled and hot-headed panel debates that fill primetime news coverage in India.

Yet while the TV coverage moved on, Zubair’s clip started gaining traction. Weeks after the incident, it has now been viewed more than 1.5 million times and sparked a major foreign policy crisis for Narendra Modi’s government, with a host of Muslim-majority countries and the US condemning the “offensive” comments.

Nupur Sharma and another BJP spokesperson who shared the comments have now been suspended from their roles, but the incident continues to spark protests across India from those calling for Sharma to be arrested and charged with inciting communal hatred.

The incident is an example of the impact being made by small outfits like Alt News, which exist in an Indian media landscape overwhelmingly populated by outlets with a favourable editorial outlook on the Modi government.

Since the organisation was founded in 2017 as an online fact-checking service based out of a small office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, its members have been doing a lot more than just debunking viral claims on social media.

Alt News has been documenting what critics say is a rising tide of hate crime and hate speech since the BJP came to power in 2014, while also exposing the intricate network of extremist groups involved in spreading it.

Under founder Pratik Sinha, the Alt News team have investigated the identities of mobs involved in lynching Muslims accused of transporting and selling beef – so-called “cow vigilantes” – and debunked false viral images purporting to show Muslims breaking Covid lockdown rules on a massive scale. When an extremist Hindu outfit held an event in Haridwar city in northern India, Zubair put the spotlight on speeches that allegedly included calls for Hindus to pick up arms against Muslims.

Sinha says his team are focused on “documenting what is happening for both accountability and posterity”, and while they call out individuals for spreading bigotry and fake news, the video of Sharma was also intended to highlight the platform channels like Times Now provide to hate speech.

“Our commentary [on such topics] is generally very limited,” says Sinha. “When Zubair posted the Times Now clip, all he said was, look, this happened. That Times Now carried this kind of inflammatory, derogatory commentary with the anchor not even intervening or interfering in what was happening and actually facilitating the process.” Times Now did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent.

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The job of calling out possible hate speech in India, especially when it comes from a voicepiece of the ruling party, invariably brings with it a number of risks. Sinha says Alt News has been hit with five legal complaints (known as an FIR in India) lodged with police in five different parts of the country.

Supporters of the BJP responded to the clip by attacking Zubair personally, with #ArrestZubair trending for days online amid accusations that he has disrespected Hindu gods in tweets in the past.

On 27 June, Zubair was arrested by the Delhi police after being called for an investigation related to a 2020 case. Sinha issued a statement saying despite repeated requests, the police has not provided them with any information.

“For a small organisation... to deal with this, the finances of all that, is a struggle,” says Sinha. “But it is something that we can battle out, it is not something that will make us tone down what we say.” He calls the backlash “a concerted attempt to silence any critical voices”, but says it is something Alt News faces on a regular basis and they are prepared for it.

On 20 July, the Supreme Court of India ordered the release of Zubair on an interim bail. “No justification to keep him in continued custody and subject him to endless rounds of custody,” the court said.

Among the complaints against Zubair is one relating to the fact that he called a speaker at the Haridwar event, Yati Narsinghanad, a “hate monger”. Zubair petitioned an Indian court this week to quash the complaint on the basis that it was a form of “harrasment”, but was ruled against.

“In the case of Zubair it is also an identity issue,” says Sinha. “It’s also about [the fact] that he is a Muslim.” Zubair could not be reached for comment for this article.

Sinha says Alt News has been forced to take on a much broader remit in India because of the shortcomings of the established media. He compares the situation to the rise of Donald Trump in the US, saying that while the American media, despite having its own flaws, documented and actively called out the lies perpetuated by the Republican president, in India “that kind of work does not happen at all, not even close to it”.

Instead, he says, news channels largely present the ruling party line, including celebrating the retaliatory demolition of Muslim homes or attributing the start of the Covid outbreak to a Muslim organisation.

“The villianisation of Muslims has been happening for over 10 years now,” says Sinha, “which has laid the ground for the hate speech [we are seeing now].”