After facing a series of setbacks in procuring a Red Corner Notice against controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has decided to begin afresh its efforts to lay hands on Naik.
Sources in the NIA said they will renew their attempts to secure an RCN and the renewed attempts will mean the agency will start from scratch and will have to go point-by-point on each matter raised by Interpol when it declined issuance of the RCN.
The agency will bolster its case and a fresh proposal may be submitted to secure an RCN against him, said an official.
The biggest set back to NIA came on July 22 when the Interpol not only refused to issue a Red Corner Notice against Naik, but also deciding to delete all data related to him in its information system, since no case was made out against him.
After the letter by the Interpol general secretariat, all the Interpol National Central Bureaus are being asked to update their national databases accordingly, where there will no longer be a reference to Naik and the charges against him slapped by the NIA.
The NIA is red faced as this is the third time its attempts to lay hands on Naik have failed. Notably, the agency had first managed to get an RCN issued against Naik in its first attempt in 2016, but this RCN got cancelled within two months since the NIA failed to file a chargesheet against him and share the report with the Interpol within the stipulated time frame.
The cancellation of the RCN was the first big embarrassment for the NIA, which later submitted its chargesheet but yet again failed to substantiate its charges linking Naik with terrorism as far as the Interpol requirements were concerned.
Ever since then, Indian agencies have been trying to lay hands on Naik who roams freely in Malaysia as a permanent resident of that country. A Red Corner Notice warrants detention or arrest of a person globally and the first step towards issuing an RCN is when the Interpol adds a suspect on its database and notifies all the countries through the Interpol NCBs which update their own databases regularly.
But, with the NIA failing to convince the Interpol with enough evidence to buttress its charges of terrorism against him in the last three years, the Interpol finally decided to delete his entry from the global watchlist.