By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
A report filed by The Hindu has said that Maharashtra State Intelligence Department (SID) has for now given a clean chit to preacher Zakir Naik, conceding that there is simply no case to be made out against the televangelist.
“Sources in the special SID team handling the probe ordered by the State government said Dr. Naik will not be and cannot be arrested upon his return to India,” the report in The Hindu said.
Nine teams of SID had been asked to study hundreds of YouTube videos and speeches given by him in and outside India.
“Senior officials said a dossier of evidence has also been received and collected from the other intelligence teams in various States, including Hyderabad, where an IS module, reportedly inspired by the speeches of Dr Naik, was busted,” the Hindu report added.
“There is no case to be made out against the English-speaking preacher, except maybe the possible charge of hurting religious sentiments, but even that cannot be established from his speeches. We are tracking his movements and only if he speaks something out of turn, we can ‘pin’ him down on a charge. For now, we are closely monitoring him,” a senior police official, who on Monday conveyed the preliminary assessment of the SID findings to the ‘higher-ups’, told The Hindu.
On Saturday, the Bangladesh newspaper Daily Star denied televangelist Zakir Naik’s allegations that the website had published a report in which it claimed that the Dhaka attack terrorists were inspired by Naik’s speeches.
“The Daily Star categorically denies this allegation and wants to say it did not report that any terrorist was inspired by Zakir Naik to kill innocent people. The report said that one of the terrorists had propagated on Facebook last year quoting Peace TV’s preacher Zakir Naik urging all Muslims to be “terrorists”. In his video speech, Dr Naik himself said he has millions of followers in Bangladesh. Our report was an attempt to show how young minds were interpreting Dr Naik’s views in ways that were perhaps not intended for,” the newspaper said in a statement.