Ousted Chief Minister of Nagaland T R Zeliang late Wednesday termed as rubbish, the media reports claiming to have documentary evidence of his involvement in terror funding case.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the former Chief Minister and senior NPF leader said the reports are ‘nothing but pure exaggeration and dim-witted imagination at its heights’.
The statement issued by information & publicity wing of the leader of opposition’s office asserted that ‘distorting facts did not change the story’, adding, ‘linking Zeliang to terror funding by some reporters buttressing their stories with fake inputs claiming to have been obtained from National Investigation Agency (NIA) and government sources was highly objectionable and put journalism ethics to shame’.
The statement further clarified that reports appearing in sections of media in Assam and Nagaland or ‘anywhere else’ linking the former Chief Minister to terror funding were ‘neither confirmed by NIA nor by Zeliang or his office’, but were ‘mere copy-paste from reports published on hearsay’.
Asserting that some ‘political virus’ with vested interests are trying to flare up the issue could not be ruled out, the leader of opposition in the statement stressed that NIA would never provide ‘false information’ to any media house and that the recent reports in the media.
Alleging that such news reports were the brainchild of people with ‘destructive mind-set’, the statement called for avoiding false news reports and publishing unconfirmed news reports ‘without authentication at all cost’.