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Row in parliament over journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik meeting with Hafiz Saeed

By FnF Desk | PUBLISHED: 14, Jul 2014, 12:35 pm IST | UPDATED: 14, Jul 2014, 12:35 pm IST

Row in parliament over journalist Ved Pratap Vaidik meeting with Hafiz Saeed New Delhi: The controversy over a meeting between 26/11 mastermind Hafiz Saeed and a journalist close to yoga teacher Ramdev today sparked a major row in Parliament.

Targeted by the opposition, the ruling BJP distanced itself from the meeting.

"The government has nothing to do with any journalist's activity in his individual capacity," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha, where protests forced the house to adjourn for some time.

Ved Pratap Vaidik, a freelance journalist, met the Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief in Lahore on July 2, while touring Pakistan along with a group of journalists and politicians invited by a peace research institute.

As a photograph of that meeting circulated on social media, senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh tweeted, "Ved Pratap Vedik meets Hafiz Sayeed. Any reaction on Social Media? Did he go as an Envoy of NDA Govt or as a personal Envoy of PM?"

Mr Vaidik said today, "I have never been a special envoy for any PM, I am my own envoy."

New Delhi accuses Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Pakistan-based terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, of plotting a series of strikes in India including the 2008 Mumbai attacks in which 166 people were killed.

Though he is on India's most wanted list and has a US bounty of 10 million dollars on him, Saeed enjoys a free run in Pakistan and often addresses public rallies in which he routinely makes inflammatory statements.

Mr Vaidik, 69, says he met Saeed as "a journalist must meet all kinds of people." He added, "For a journalist, no one is untouchable. I wanted to prove him wrong and influence his thinking."

He says to a question on Prime Minister Narendra Modi visiting Pakistan, Saeed told him he is "welcome".

Saeed reportedly also told Mr Vaidik that he hadn't done anything wrong. "I asked him, are all these countries mindless? He told me former home minister of Pakistan Rehman Malik conspired against him because America wanted him. He arrested him because they wanted the money," the veteran journalist said.