Jaipur: What’s in a name? Ask Sufi speaker Haji Syed Salman Chishty of Ajmer. He is having a hard time seeing his photograph being wrongly used to depict Syed Salman Chishty, the fugitive cleric who was arrested for offering a bounty to kill ex-BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.
Both share the same lineage of being clerics at Ajmer Dargah, hold the same title ‘Syed’, surname and even studied in the same school in Ajmer. But the two are poles apart when it comes to their actions. The former has risen to become an acclaimed speaker on Sufism representing the Dargah at United Nations and US State Department and regularly sharing space with NSA Ajit Doval’s Vivekananda International Foundation, while the latter is a fugitive with 13 cases, from attempt to murder, arson, rioting, forgery etc, registered in Dargah police station.
“A phone from a friend and senior Supreme Court lawyer in Delhi asked me to check his message sent to my WhatsApp on July 4 evening turned my life upside down. The message had an image of a news channel reading ‘Ajmer Dargah’s Salman Chishty threatened to behead Nupur Sharma.’ Then, I was not aware of any such video being circulated on social media,” said the Sufi speaker, who didn’t have any idea that the message will follow a barrage of phone calls, hate messages and his picture will be circulated in news.
“Till today, news channels and websites have been sharing my picture with the news. I have called up channels/websites and they assured of running a correction but are repeatedly using my picture,” said Chishty.
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