NEW DELHI: There is never a dull moment for accused terror preacher Zakir Naik. Searches by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on the Islamic International School premises in Bhaucha Dhakka near Mazgon dock in Mumbai during a crackdown against the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF) and its founder Naik yielded 500 DVDs and CDs containing instructions on how to radicalise and indoctrinate students into hardline Salafist Islam. While the school was affiliated to the Cambridge IGCSE curriculum, only students from the conservative section of the Muslim community were admitted. NIA sources said this was aimed at brainwashing them into following the IRF agenda of radicalisation and terror. It was mandatory for school boys to wear skullcaps and girls to don veils. Despite the school’s co-ed nature, strict Islamic codes were the norm. Boys and girls used separate entry and exit gates. Boys were also forbidden from seeing the face of any girl on campus and vice versa. Even the classrooms were separate, according to preliminary findings by the NIA, which is analysing the seized material.
The NIA found a mass of radical material after raiding the Islamic International School premises in, Mumbai run by the Islamic Research Foundation and its founder Zakir Naik. Students were made to learn the Quran by heart. The focus of the school curriculum was on religious teaching and not the modern syllabus approved by the government. At the time of admission, school officials asked children if they watched cable television and wore non-Islamic clothing. Admission was not granted to those whose parents answered in the affirmative.
Even as the agency is analysing seized material including electronic storage devices, CDs and DVDs, investigators also suspect Islamic Research Foundation of supplying radical mind control material to other schools across the country, which are influenced by Naik’s extremist views.
A Chennai-based school is also under the NIA radar. It is likely to face action shortly. The name of the school is being withheld so as to not hamper the ongoing investigations. Police had raided an IRF-run school in Kochi, Kerala earlier in the year after NIA discovered some of its students had travelled to Syria to fight the IS.
The NIA has booked IRF, Naik and others under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and some sections of the Indian Penal Code relating to promoting religious enmity between communities and
for committing acts prejudicial to the maintenance of peace and harmony.