Controversial preacher Zakir Naik has claimed that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has linked him to terrorism “without any evidence to support its stand”.
“It is unfortunate that NIA, having spent over three years investigating me, has been publicly making claims connecting me to terrorism without having in possession a single shred of evidence to support it,” Zakir Naik said in a statement.
The NIA has registered a case against the controversial preacher and his organization Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) for having radicalised many through his videos.
NIA Inspector General Alok Mittal had on Monday said that security agencies had arrested 127 people from different parts of the country in recent years for having links with ISIS. He further said that the accused in majority of these ISIS cases have admitted that they were radicalized through videos of Zakir Naik.
Naik is a known hate preacher whose name prominently figured during the Dhaka bomb blasts in July 2016 that killed many. A bomber later confessed that he was influenced by Naik’s messages following which he fled India.
Naik, who used to preach on the now-banned ‘Peace TV’, has been living in Malaysia for around 3 years in a bid to escape the Indian law after cases were filed against him here in the wake of a terror attack in Bangladesh in 2016.