Mumbai: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) spokesperson and MLA Nawab Malik has claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had distorted a remark he had made one year ago on a television discussion and was circulating it to defame him. At a press conference in the party's new office on Friday, he said, “On December 21, 2018, I was part of a debate on News 18 on the statement by actor Naseeruddin Shah, that he feared for his children in the India of today. I had said, the BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra was adopting the tactics of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's notorious propaganda minister. I said some people belonged to the lineage of Goebbels, were proponents of lies and campaigned as if they were Hitler's campaigners. Patra misinterpreted the statement and said I spoke of him as belonging to lineage of 'gobar' (cowdung).
"He then said I had talked about the Hindus belonging to the lineage of gobar, while I had not named any community at all. That clip was edited, distorted and is now being made viral over the last few days again," said Malik. "This video is being circulated with the intention of spreading communal hatred."
For the last few days, the (BJP)'s IT cell has been trolling Nawab Malik with this fake news and Malik has lodged a complaint with the cyber cell of the Bandra-Kurla Complex Police. The BJP could not be reached for comments on his allegations.
Last year, the BJP's IT cell had trolled him after this debate, and he had even received threat calls, Malik said.
The latest attempt to defame him on social media began after the NCP, Congress and Shiv Sena formed a government in Maharashtra, he said.
Malik also claimed that he had been receiving threatening phone calls from a gangster, said to be hiding in a foreign country, many times in the past five years for criticising the BJP.
