Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Shafiqur Rahman has dismissed reports in local media claiming he held a secret meeting with Indian diplomats, calling the coverage “misleading” and “baseless”.
In a Facebook post on Thursday morning, he clarified his position regarding references to a “confidential” meeting with two Indian diplomats that appeared in an interview he gave to Reuters.
Expressing surprise at reports of the meeting, he strongly condemned the claims and urged media outlets to refrain from publishing misleading news without verifying the facts.
He explained that when a Reuters journalist asked him “whether, since India is your neighbouring country, you have any communication with them, any discussions or meetings,” he replied that in the middle of last year, after he fell ill and returned home following treatment, many people from home and abroad came to meet me.
“Just as respected diplomats from other countries visited, two Indian diplomats also came to my residence to see me. Like with the others, I spoke with them as well,” he clarified.
During the conversation, he said that for every diplomat who has visited, they have made the meetings public.
“We said we would also make their visit public. At that time, they requested us not to do so. We then told them that whenever there is a meeting in the future concerning matters of mutual interest between the two countries, it will certainly be made public. There is nothing secret here,” he explained.
