Radical Islamic preacher Zakir Naik who is currently in Oman is likely to be deported to India, as per the agencies. He duing one of his meetings said that the lawyers of the government of India failed to present a single piece of document against him while they were asking to attach his properties in India.
India outlawed Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) late in 2016, on the charges of encouraging and assisting the group’s followers in “promoting or attempting to promote feelings of enmity, hatred, or ill-will between different religious communities and groups.” In March 2022, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) declared IRF an unlawful association and outlawed it for five years. To evade the law, Naik relocated to Malaysia. Even though he has permanent residency in Malaysia, the country also banned Naik from giving speeches in the interests of “national security” in 2020.
Since then several attempts have been made to bring him to India. Last year he was invited to the FIFA world cup 2022 organised in Qatar.
In the viral video Zakir can be seen telling people that, “Alhamdulillah, when a judge in the Indian court says, (when they wanted to attach all my properties) the judge was a Sikh, Manmohan Singh. Fortunately he had seen many of my talks. He said, to the lawyer of the government, you point out one statement of Dr. Zakir Naik, in context, in any lecture where he promotes terrorism, I will attach all his property”.
He added, “The problem is that majority of Hindus in India love me. They love me so much that it is creating a problem for the vote bank. In India when I do talks and meeting there are hundrends and thousands of people, 50 million to 100 million, especially in Bihar and Kishanganj, out of these 20% are non-muslims, this means out of 100 million 20 millions are Hindus. And when they sepak to me they tell, Zakir Bhai what we learned in the last two hours (in his lecture) they did not learn after giving 40 hours in our religion”.
In January 2018, Justice Manmohan Singh, who headed the Appellate Tribunal for PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) at New Delhi, restrained the agency from taking over Naik’s properties attached by the agency.
Singh observed, “I can name 10 babas who have properties worth more than Re 10,000 crore each and they are facing criminal cases. Have you acted against even one of them? What have you done against Asaram Bapu?”
When the lawyer said that Naik instigated youths through his speeches, Justice Singh pointed out the ED did not produce any prima facie evidence or statements from “such misguided youths” as to how these speeches pushed them to commit illegal acts.
“Have you recorded anybody’s statement as to how they were influenced by these speeches? Your chargesheet does not even mention how these speeches played any role in a terror attack in Dhaka in 2015,” he said.
“Have you read the speeches which form part of your charge sheet? I have heard many of these speeches and I can tell you that so far I haven’t come across anything objectionable,” the judge told the ED’s lawyer.
Raising questions whether ED was being selective in acting against Naik, the Tribuna’s chairman observed that the agency seems to have done nothing in the last 10 years about confiscating properties of Asaram but looked to act a lot quicker in this case.
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