| schema:text
| - Fact Check: No, Malaysia hasn't agreed to hand over Zakir Naik to India
Several social media users have recently shared a post which claimed that controversial Islamic televangelist and preacher Zakir Naik is being extradited to India from Malaysia. The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
There are no recent reports of India engaging Malaysia over the extradition of Zakir Naik. The footage in circulation is from 2018. Two days after airing this story, ABP News, among other media outlets, confirmed the Malaysian government rejecting Naik's deportation to India.
Several social media users recently claimed that controversial Islamic televangelist and preacher Zakir Naik is being extradited to India from Malaysia. The claim, shared along with the footage of a news report by ABP Live, hailed the Narendra Modi-led government for this.
"Zakir Naik being brought back to India another achievement by MODI govt.. burnol stocks for liberals needed," one such tweet said.
Similar claims have been archived here and here.
The India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim misleading. The news clip shared was from 2018.
AFWA Probe
Naik is wanted in India for hate speech, money laundering, and terror-related activities. We first looked for recent news reports on Naik. We set the Google custom time range to just the past month in our search. However, there were no reports by any mainstream news outlet.
Since the video circulated along with the claim belonged to ABP Live, we checked the channel's Facebook page next. When we searched with his name, we found the news report in question was uploaded to the page on July 4, 2018.
We ran a keyword search with a time range set to 2018. This led us to a report by Alt News from 2021 that debunked a similar claim about Zakir Naik's extradition. We found that the picture of Naik and the logo of a Facebook page on the video fact-checked by Alt News was the same as those on the videos shared now. The source of this video was a Facebook page called “Phir Ek Bar Modi Sarkar”.
Hence, it became clear that the video was not new at all.
We also found several news reports of then-Malaysian PM Mahathir Mohamad rejecting Naik's deportation to India. "As long as he is not creating any problem, we will not deport him because he has been given permanent residency status," the leader said at the time.
These reports stated that India tried to get Naik from Malaysia via the extradition treaty between the two countries.
On July 6, ABP Live also published a similar report that confirmed Malaysia's unwillingness to hand over Naik to India. This story can be read here.
There was also a 2019 report in the Economic Times that said Mahathir denied PM Modi asking for Naik's extradition. He said that Modi made no extradition request when they met at Russia's Vladivostok during an economic forum.
Thus, it can be safely concluded that India has not recently engaged Malaysia over the extradition of Zakir Naik. The news footage shared by several users is from 2018.
(With inputs from Yash Mittal in New Delhi)
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)