"Hurting religious sentiments" by tweeting a screenshot of a 1983 movie is obviously not a war crime. Zubair is a journalist who was jailed for spurious reasons:
> Retired Supreme Court judge Justice Deepak Gupta on Tuesday said that questions arise on the Delhi Police for arresting journalist Mohammad Zubair for allegedly hurting religious sentiments even as suspended Bharatiya Janata Party Nupur Sharma is still free despite making controversial comments on Prophet Muhammad, Live Law reported.
> The first information report against Zubair was based on a complaint by Delhi Police Sub-Inspector Arun Kumar, who said he was monitoring social media when he came across the March 2018 tweet after a handle named Hanuman Bhakt raised objections.
> The handle had taken objection to Zubair’s tweet, showing a hotel signboard with the name “Honeymoon Hotel” repainted to “Hanuman Hotel”. The journalist’s lawyer has argued in court that the photo is a screenshot taken from a 1983 Hindi movie.
> On Tuesday, Gupta said that nobody had complained about the movie for 40 years. “How was it [the tweet] reported based on one anonymous complaint?” he asked.
As a journalist, Mohammad Zubair is like Maria Ressa. Both speak truth to power in countries in which press freedom is an ongoing issue, and both are not afraid to publish inconvenient facts that reflect poorly on the ruling party of their countries. There are plenty of Indian sources that reported on Zubair being jailed for "hurting religious sentiments", so I'm not sure how your dislike of Western media is relevant. Your comparisons of Zubair are also not very appropriate, since "hurting religious sentiments" is not the same thing as publishing false information.
The BJP expelled Nupur Sharma from her position as the national spokesperson of the BJP because of the incendiary comments she chose to make on live television. Mohammad Zubair made a compilation of her comments and did not change any of her words.
As the former Supreme Court judge Deepak Gupta said, one of the problems in this case is that the journalist Mohammad Zubair was jailed for "hurting religious sentiments" because he tweeted a screenshot of a 1983 Hindi comedy film, while the politician Nupur Sharma was not jailed despite her incendiary comments "hurting religious sentiments" on live television.
> “If she [Sharma] could say that…which had a much bigger propensity to incite violence… but she is not arrested, Zubair is...Then some questions do arise on the fairness of the police,” Gupta said, in an interview to Live Law.
Additionally, the fact that there is even a law that allows the government to imprison people for making comments perceived to be "hurting religious sentiments" is a serious violation of freedom of speech.
As a former MP, Ahmed was obviously also a politician and there are plenty of articles from Indian media describing him as a politician. Someone can be both a politician and a mobster at the same time.
You lie by speaking selectively. BJP leadership was supportive of Nupur Sharma initially. Prominent Muslim figures like Nasiruddin Shah (who normally despise BJP) have come out and said that Nupur Sharma did not say anything wrong about Mohammed.
BJP distanced itself from her after they got a lot of push back from friendly Middle Eastern states. BJP are a bunch of opportunist cowards themselves anyway.
There is no case against Nupur Sharma and she only said what she said (on that TV show) after having been provoked by another Muslim panelist about Hinduism and Hindu gods.
Politicians are responsible for the statements they make. Nupur Sharma is a politician who made a statement that the public took offense to, and she had to endure the political consequences regardless of what anyone else said before or after her comments. The other panelist in the debate is not a high-ranking political figure and the public does not necessarily demand the same level of decorum from him.
Nobody here is claiming that Sharma deserves to die for her incendiary comments, which went far beyond "quoting a religious book". However, she did get expelled from her position as national spokesperson of the BJP and that is an appropriate response, considering the negative feedback she has received.
