Sanatan Sanstha has forwarded a letter to the Home Ministry and National Investigation Agency to impose a ban on Islamic preacher Zakir Naik’s facebook page Islamic Research Foundation and register offence against active members of the organisation. Naik has more than 6 million followers on facebook and has delivered more than 4000 lectures pertaining to Islam across the world. He is wanted in India for allegedly financing terror activities and money laundering. Naik had left the country after reports emerged that attackers responsible for Dhaka terror attack were inspired by his speech pertaining to Islam.
In a letter addressed to Home Ministry and NIA, advocate Nagesh C Takbhate mentioned, “Facebook has more than 166 monthly active users in India. Out of these at least 85 millions users use facebook daily while 81 million access the website through a mobile device. After years of fighting armed terrorists with bullets and brickbats, security agencies are now facing a new enemy in the form of bedroom jihadis who manipulate social media from the comfort of their homes to spread rumours and influence youths. Social media is strong and much more advanced platform to propagation as compared to public meeting and lectures held earlier. If Zakir Naik’s facebook remains active then it won’t serve any purpose to ban IRF.”
The central government had banned Islamic Research Foundation on 17th November 2016. Nagpada Police station has registered offence under sections 10, 13 and 38 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Despite this IRF is operating an active official facebook page and it has not been blocked by investigating agencies. A valid contact number is also provided on IRF’s facebook page. The following is the link of the page https://www.facebook.com/irfonline
“The Home Ministry had genuine evidence that Zakir Naik has been encouraging and aiding his followers to promote disharmony between different religious communities and groups. The central government had received information that the statements and speech delivered by Naik was objectionable and subversive in nature as he has been extolling the known terrorist like Osama Bin Laden proclaiming that every Muslim should be a terrorist and claiming that if Islam indeed wanted 80 per cent of Indian population would not have remained Hindus as they could have been converted,” added Takbhate.
Naik’s followers of banned organisation are active through its official facebook page. IRF and Naik are active even after the notification of ban and are committing cognizable offence.
