By Mumtaz Alam
New Delhi: Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is seriously considering legal action against Praveen Swami of The Hindu, English daily, for his baseless and hateful propaganda against the Jamaat for quite some time. In recent instances, Swami has termed Jamaat as part of Jihadist network in India while giving a lecture to trainee civil servants at Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.
“Praveen Swami has been regularly writing without proof against the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. Directly or indirectly, he is trying to damage the image of the Jamaat,” said Mohammad Salim Engineer, national secretary, Public Relations, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. “Now we are seriously mulling over legal options, we can file a lawsuit in court to keep him in check and other such journalists who are using lies to spread hatred among communities,” Salim said, adding that the Constitution of India has provision for such legal recourse.
Praveen Swami, Senior Associate Editor and Chief of National Bureau of national English daily, The Hindu, recently while delivering a lecture at Sardar Patel Institute of Public Administration in Ahmedabad mentioned Jamaat- e- Islami and several institutions which are affiliated to the Jamaat as part of the Jihadist network in India. The topic of his power point presentation was “Islamists in India and the Global Jihadist Movement”.
Salim said Swami’s writings cast aspersions over his own professionalism and journalism. They often seem to be based on dossiers of intelligence agencies. Several national and international intelligence agencies are hell bent to destroy the image of Islam and provoke hatred against the Muslim community. Swami’s articles and ‘exclusive’ stories on terrorism “ which have fallen flat after proper probes of terror blasts “ appear to be part of the design of intelligence agencies and thus require proper investigation.
Salim Engineer said that the baseless writings of Praveen Swami have sullied the fair image of The Hindu. Such irresponsible stories will dent its impartial image. He demanded the management of The Hindu to put some check on Swami or remove him to save its image.
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