No jihad, only love, ‘abducted’ city girl tells NIA from Dhaka

The case was initially registered by Chennai CCB for alleged human trafficking after the girl’s businessman father lodged a complaint but later shifted to the NIA urgently.

The NIA had initially said that the woman studying in London was abducted by Bangladeshi gang, suspected to have links with Islamic preacher Zakir Naik. The gang allegedly sexually exploited and trafficked the woman.

The woman, now living in Dhaka, who got converted to Islam and married Bangladeshi man Nafees, son of a politician there, had told the NIA investigators on a WhatsApp call that she was not forced or kidnapped, while her parents in Chennai alleged that Nagees was part of the gang luring girls from India and trafficking them.

The NIA, Delhi, has registered a case under eight IPC Sections including conspiracy, criminal intimidation, kidnapping, trafficking and sexual exploitation besides wrongful confinement, extortion attempt and death threats against Nafees, his father Sardar Shakhawat Hussain Bakul and Zakir Naik, the controversial Islamic preacher who was in the news for his radical discourse.

The woman from Royapettah had gone to London for higher studies where she met Nafees and married him.

“There seems to be no jihad, but only love in the case,” a NIA source said adding the case never went the way the woman’s family wanted.