Mumbai police to keep a close eye on Zakir Naik

Naik is expected to arrive in the city on Monday and may address a press conference at a five star hotel at Nariman Point the next day

The Mumbai Police will be keeping a close eye on Islamic preacher Zakir Naik once he arrives in the city, deploying plainclothesmen in large numbers.

Zakir Naik speeches allegedly influenced a number of terrorists, including two of the six attackers who killed 20 people in an upscale café in Bangladesh capital Dhaka. (File photo)

Naik is expected to arrive in the city on Monday and may address a press conference at a five star hotel at Nariman Point the next day.

Read: Cops find Zakir Naik’s Peace TV editing studio in Dongri

A special investigation team, set up after chief minister Devendra Fadnavis asked city police commissioner Dattatray Padsalgikar to conduct a thorough probe into Naik’s activities, is scrutinizing his speeches on the Internet, besides studying DVDs, CDs and other literature, including those of his Islamic Research Foundation.

The SIT is monitoring the current status of social networking sites of those wanted and arrested in terror cases in the past.

Police sources said they were also sifting through the interrogation reports of the accused to know how many suspects were influenced by Naik’s speeches. Two years back Areeb Majeed, a Kalyan youth who had fled India and joined the ISIS in Syria only to be deported, after his arrest in India reportedly told interrogators that he was influenced by Naik’s speeches.

Soon after Deshmukh’s arrest another accused in the case identified as Rahil, a Grant road resident, fled India and is said to be in Bangladesh. Deshmukh and Rahil were in constant touch with each other before the case.