Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair, founders of fact-checking website AltNews, are among the favorites to win the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. The winner will be announced on Friday in Oslo, Norway.
They were featured in the list of ‘favourite’ contenders for the prize, compiled by Time magazine.
Others featured in the Time list included the young climate activist Greta Thunburg, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Russia’s jailed opposition leader and activist Alexey Navalny, and English broadcaster, natural historian and author David Attenborough.
Pratik Sinha and Mohammed Zubair "have relentlessly been battling misinformation in India, where the Hindu nationalist BJP party has been accused of frequently stoking discrimination against Muslims," Time's write-up for the duo notes.
The two have been calling out hate speech and have "methodologically debunked rumors and fake news circulating on social media," the Time note said.
In June, Zubair was arrested for allegedly hurting religious sentiments through his social media posts. The police action came after a Twitter user brought to the attention of the cops the tweets by the journalist which were deemed inimical to communal harmony.
The Supreme Court granted him bail a few weeks later.
