Following Mr Cheng’s post, former Singapore Democratic Party chairman Jufrie Mahmood filed a police report on March 28 in which he accused the former NMP of being an Islamophobe, citing a previous example of derogatory language being used to describe a group of madrasah students.
Mr Cheng rebutted the accusation, calling it a “false attribution” as the remarks were made by another individual, and said on April 2 that he will be taking legal action against Mr Jufrie, as well as several others, for making defamatory statements.
Noting that the police will follow through with the report, Mr Shanmugam said: “I will leave aside whether Mr Jufrie has put out falsehoods, and if he has, then that can be serious.”