Dhaka, July 10 (PTI): Bangladesh today banned the broadcast of Peace TV, a Dubai-based channel run by Indian preacher Zakir Naik, whose "provocative" speeches had allegedly inspired two of the militants involved in the July 1 siege of a Dhaka restaurant.
The governments of India and Maharashtra too are probing the contents of the televangelist's sermons, the funding of his Mumbai-based Islamic Research Foundation, and his possible terror links.
A meeting of Bangladesh's cabinet committee on law and order decided to ban Peace TV Bangla and monitor all Friday sermons to check for provocative content, industry minister Amir Hossain Amu said.
The Bangladesh government has appealed to all imams in the country to stick to sermons that project the "real Islamic ideology of denouncing terrorism and extremism", Amu said.
Dhaka has also ordered the deployment of additional security forces at export-processing zones.
Home minister Asaduzzaman Khan had yesterday said that Bangladeshi intelligence agencies were investigating the 50-year-old Naik's possible role in the July 1 attack, which killed 20 restaurant customers - mostly foreigners - and two policemen.
"He is on our security scanner. Our intelligence agencies are investigating his activities as his lectures appeared provocative," Khan had said.
He had added that the investigators were also probing Naik's financial transactions in Bangladesh.
One of the militants slain during the restaurant siege, Rohan Imtiaz, 22, had purportedly quoted Naik in a Facebook post in January, urging "all Muslims to be terrorists".
Naik says he never supported terrorists and has always opposed the killing of innocent people.
Britain and Canada have banned Naik from visiting, while Malaysia has banned his lectures fearing they could inflame racial tensions.
Plea to parents
Bangladesh has ordered all educational institutions to notify local authorities about students who have been absent for more than 10 days running.
The move follows reports that some of the July 1 militants were university students and alumni of leading Dhaka schools who had been missing for months.
A suspect from the Id attack in Kishorganj too was a student who had disappeared in March, police said.#Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had last week appealed to parents of missing children to inform the authorities.
Since the July 1 attack, the parents of 10 young men who have been missing for several months have sought police help to find them.
The US today offered its expertise to Bangladesh in bolstering its counter-terrorism capabilities, the proposal coming during a meeting between Nisha Desai Biswal, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, foreign minister A.H. Mahmood Ali and foreign secretary Md Shahidul Haque.
