India’s Supreme Court today (July 20, 2022) granted interim bail to fact-checking portal Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair in all six FIRs registered against him in Uttar Pradesh state – for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through tweets – and ordered his release by this evening.

In early 2017, when I was mulling over launching BD FactCheck – the first fact-checking initiative in Bangladesh – we looked for who else in the region was already working in this field.

Journalists should not be jailed for “what they write, what they tweet and what they say” and it is important that people be allowed to express themselves freely without the threat of any harassment, a spokesperson for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has said.