One person was arrested on Saturday for raising anti-national slogans during a procession taken out on Friday in support of the controversial televangelist Zakir Naik on a busy road in Patna.
After examining the video footage of the procession, taken out under the banner of Popular Front of India (PFI), the city magistrate lodged an FIR against those who raised anti-India slogans and later one person, said to be the secretary of the Bihar unit of PFI, was arrested. “We’ve arrested one person called Mohd. Taufique and the Central intelligence agencies are assisting us in the case,” Manu Maharaj, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police, told The Hind u.
Earlier on Friday when the controversial preacher Zakir Naik was addressing media persons from Saudi Arabia on Skype in Mumbai, his followers under the banner of Popular Front of India had taken out a procession on busy Ashok Rajpath of Patna in his support The protestors also shouted anti-national slogans like “Pakistan Zindabad” and anti-Narendra Modi government at the Centre. It was for the first time such slogans were shouted in a procession, said a police official.
There is a conspiracy going on in India for long by the fascist forces to silence voice of Muslims, their religious freedom and freedom of what they would wear and eat”, PFI leader Mohd Reyaz Moari told journalists during the procession on Friday. The procession had begun from Patna Science College to the Kargil Chowk, near Gandhi Maida on Ashok Rajpath. The protestors were carrying large-size photographs of Zakir Naik and Assauddin Owaisi on both sides of the banner.
Significantly, the controversial preacher Zakir Naik had Bihar connections too as he had addressed a huge public meeting in the Muslim dominated border district of Kishanganj in April 2012. His books, copies of speeches and photographs too were earlier recovered from the Dar-ul-Qitab-Sunna library of Karamganj area in Darbhanga district from where some of the Indian Mujahedeen (IM) module activists were earlier arrested. The founding member of the IM Yasin Bhatkal who was arrested by the NIA from Raxaul border, too was said to be frequently visiting the library during his stay in Darbhanga in 2010-11.
Condemning the anti-India slogans, the Opposition BJP leaders and activists of its student wing ABVP attacked the Nitish Kumar government for its “soft approach towards anti-national elements”.
“Its because of soft approach of the Nitish Kumar government the Pakistan supported slogans were shouted in Patna”, tweeted senior state BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi. The ABVP activists too took out procession in Patna and Begusarai attacking the state government and demanding stern action against those who shouted anti-national slogans at Friday’s procession.
