India’s Home Ministry has put controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik under the scanner ever since it was reported that his speeches inspired the militants who attacked an upscale cafe in Dhaka on July 1. And the sleuths are likely to find that the Wahhabi televangelist was invited to give a lecture by the Sardar Patel National Police Academy in Hyderabad, which trains India’s IPS officers.
On May 13, 2013, Zakir Naik addressed over 160 IPS trainee officers (plus 10 officers from Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives), in addition to senior IPS officers at the invitation of the academy. And his topic? 'Terrorism and Jihad: An Islamic Perspective', a blog called News Analysis India has claimed.
One IPS officer who graduated from NPA that year confirmed to newindianexpress.com that Zakir Naik had indeed been invited to speak at the academy. Now posted in Telangana, the officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, recalled Zakir Naik's lecture: "Unlike other lectures at NPA, Zakir Naik's ended up in a heated debate between the preacher and some of the probationers who did not agree with his viewpoints."
About 70 Indian Forest Service officers and those from India’s paramilitary forces (stationed as faculty members at the academy) too attended the lecture, which was followed by an open question and answer session, the biog claims.
The officer newindianexpress.com spoke to said the lecture was part of the NPA’s regular policy of inviting expert speakers from different fields is invited twice a month to lecture to its probationers.
Zakir Naik’s Facebook page confirms that he visited the academy, but claims he was given an award by the IPS academy.
Reports emerged last week that one of the militants who attacked an upscale café in Dhaka on July 1 had shared one of his Zakir Naik’s speeches in a Facebook post in January this year in which he is said to have urged "all Muslims to become terrorists". On Sunday, Bangladesh banned Naik’s controversial Peace TV, claiming that it incited the recent attack on the Dhaka café.
Zakir Naik is a proponent of the militant Wahhabi sect of Islam. His Peace TV sermons are said to have a following of 100 million viewers and his Facebook account has 14 million likes. He was ranked among the top 70 in a list of the ‘500 Most Influential Muslims in the World’ published by George Washington University in 2011.