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Zakir Naik's YouTube videos a concern, says NIA

Though the government can request the social media and get it done, monitoring individuals uploading his speeches next to impossible

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The government might have blocked websites owned by the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), but its founder Zakir Naik continues to thrive on YouTube, where thousands of his speeches remain.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA), currently probing Naik on terror charges, maintains that it has written to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on the YouTube videos, but there seems to be little movement from the ministry.

The NIA, during search operations on IRF premises, confiscated video tapes and DVDs of Naik's public speeches. The NIA says that examining the speeches was a lengthy process as the quantity of videos were poor, but said that the YouTube speeches were a different ball game all together.

A single YouTube channel named Dr Zakir Naik has close to 3 lakh subscriptions and has 1,615 videos. The latest was uploaded a week ago. Islamic Productions, which too regularly uploads the preacher's speeches, has a total view of 2.3 crore, though the channel was started in January this year. Dr Zakir Naik - IRF, another channel, has 35,211 subscribers, with 7,081,194 views. Other channels like MIK Islamic Media and Voice of Zakir Naik also have heavy traffic.

"We have written to the MHA to block YouTube videos. It is a time-consuming process, but, for now, we are focusing on the videos we confiscated from IRF premises," said an official, adding that the videos will be examined by a team of experts with a good hold on comparative religion, something which Naik had mastered over the years.

The NIA claims that the initial analysis of the videos of Naik's speeches suggests that the preacher allegedly "crossed the line of legality" in some of his seminars.

"Websites of IRF as well as of Islamic International School have already been blocked. IRF is also very active on Twitter and Facebook and the process of blocking the pages and IDs has been initiated. YouTube does remain a concern but we are sure the issue will be resolved in a few days," said the official.

Requests by investigating agencies, like blocking of IP addresses and websites, are generally forwarded by an MHA panel to the Ministry of Information Technology, and are implemented by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeITY).

Before the NIA had booked Naik under terror charges, an MHA official told DNA that no decision has been taken on whether the YouTube videos will be blocked. For now, the NIA is awaiting the ministry's decision.

The blocking of YouTube videos, however, will not be the end of the problem, according to NIA officials. While the agency has identified some YouTube channels run by IRF, monitoring individuals uploading videos of Naik will be a tough task.

(With inputs from Amrita Nayak Dutta)

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