The upcoming movie “The Kerala Story” teaser released on November 3rd, 2022 is facing similar flak to the blockbuster The Kashmir Files faced. The Kashmir Files was released on 11 march 2022 and faced a lot of criticism before its release from the left-liberal cabal. The film was based on the exodus of Kashmiri pandits by the Muslims from the valley that faced flak stating that the movie promotes Islamophobia.

Likewise ‘The Kerala Story’ which is produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah and directed by Sudipto Sen, tells the harrowing tales of 32,000 Keralite women who were radicalized and joined ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria).

The teaser of the film starts with a Muslim woman telling her experience in front of the international border. According to the actress Adah Sharma’s portrayal of the character, Shalini Unnikrishnan once desired to work as a nurse for the public. She further claims that after being forcibly converted to Islam and given the new name Fatima Ba, she was sent to ISIS to join their terrorist organization before being imprisoned in an Afghan jail.

The Kerala Story describes the suffering of 32000 of these Keralan Muslim converts who were transferred to ISIS as terrorists only to perish in the Syrian and Yemeni deserts. In Kerala, a terrifying game of transforming a typical girl into an ISIS terrorist has been performed for a while. This trafficking of girls to the Gulf is caused by growing radicalism in the southern state as a result of the actions of Islamist groups like the Popular Front of India and its affiliated organizations.

A new analysis estimates that since 2009, 32,000 female members of the Hindu and Christian faiths in Kerala and Mangalore have converted to Islam. Most of these girls eventually end up in Afghanistan, Syria, and other countries with significant ISIS and Haqqani presence. The truth about this scheme and the pain of these women will be revealed in the film.

Background

Despite the fact that the conversions began in 2009, ISIS involvement in Kerala was only discovered in 2013. ISIS started a presence in Kerala as early as 2014, with educational materials promoting religious conversions and recruiting professionals to join its forces in Afghanistan and Syria. Many men and women from Kerala are rumored to have recently joined the ISKP (Islamic State of Khorasan Province). The Indian state of Kerala is home to a sizable number of ISIS terrorists, the United Nations warned in its 2020 terrorism assessment.

A charge sheet submitted by the National Investigation Agency in July 2020 in connection with the murder of Special Sub Inspector Wilson showed a strong connection between ISIS terrorists present and expanding in the state. Cases of IS running recruitment centers in Kerala are now under investigation by the NIA. In recent years, a number of non-Muslim women have also been radicalized, converted, and sent to fight for the Islamic State in Syria and Afghanistan.

The problem of Kerala women being converted and recruited by ISIS garnered extra significant attention in 2016 after Mini Vijayan, a military official, stated that her daughter Aparna had been forcibly converted to Islam. Aparna was connected to Sathyasarani, also known as the Markazul Hidaya Educational and Charitable Trust with headquarters in Malappuram. Sumayya was with her when she arrived at the courts. Aparna told the authorities that she had become a Muslim and did not wish to reunite with her mother. As a B. Tech. student, Aparna vanished from her Kochi dorm, and she later wed Malappuram-born auto driver Aashiq.

These incidents have been recorded in a number of places. Two Hindu ladies with the names Athira and Akhila (who later changed their names to Hadiya) had been seduced by Sainaba, a PFI member when the NIA started looking into the Love Jihad and ISIS connection cases in 2017.

This strikingly resembles instances of forced conversion in Pakistan’s Sindh. The main distinction is that the victims are now adults as a result of India’s stringent laws against underage marriage. Because the law protects the girl and her Muslim husband for behaving of their own free choice, the cases simply get dismissed or stalled as a result, creating extra problems for the family members and police. Without the girl’s explicit confession, the family and authorities cannot demonstrate pressure or brainwashing.

The sheer number of recruiting, conversion, and radicalization facilities in operation is still far from catching the attention to the notice of the national media. Using women as tools and weapons, whether through sex slavery or recruitment for terrorism, is no longer a taboo in the post-ISIS world. The state and federal governments must treat it seriously and come up with workable measures to address the issue.

 

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