Kin suspect police support in ‘abduction’: teen converts to Islam, married to ‘abductor’
A group of radicalized Muslim youths armed to the teeth allegedly abducted a 19-year-old Christian nursing student at night in Kanjirappalli, Kottayam district on Wednesday. The abduction took place on the day the girl had completed her home quarantine as advised by the state health officials after she travelled from Andhra Pradesh, where she is pursuing her BSc Nursing course, alleged relatives. According to the father of the girl, a gang of 10-15 Muslim youths belonging to various political parties descended on the house in the night and took away his daughter when all were asleep. Her mother is working in a Gulf country.
The relatives of the girl said the boy, Hakim Thaiparambil, is a local DYFI leader, the youthwing of the CPI(M). The son of an auto-driver, Hakim doesn’t have any source of livelihood. Christians suspect that the local police also supported the move, as otherwise, how come a gang of 10-15 youths move about when there are stringent restrictions on movement due to lockdown. “Muslims in other political parties like SDPI, Congress and Muslim League supported the abduction,” writes Justin George in a Facebook post.
More than 2500 Christian girls have been trapped in ‘Love Jihad’ in the last six years in the state. The media very conveniently did not publish such news items.
“This is a clear case of Love Jihad, an organised move to trap gullible Christian girls and make them wives of Muslim boys to make Kerala an Islamic country. The CPI(M) is also a party to it as there is a huge penetration of radical Muslims into the party rank and file. The duplicity of the media in Kerala is very startling. There is no piece of news on the incident as the perpetrators were Muslims,” Josey Joseph, a local Christian activist.
Sources said the girl has been converted to Islam next day and the marriage was arranged. “Some extremist Muslim organisations have fanned out youths to trap gullible Christian girls. It is unfortunate that the whole Muslim community gives support to such elements. This is not true love; if it were why intimidate parents of girls and convert the girls overnight,” said a Christian priest, who doesn’t want to be identified. According to him, more than 2500 Christian girls have been trapped in ‘Love Jihad’ in the last six years.
The incident had sent shock waves in the Christian community, which has been witnessing a steady rise in ‘Love Jihad’ cases involving Christian girls. A report of the National Commission for Minorities has also drawn the Union Home Ministry’s attention to “the trapping of Christian girls in fraudulent love affairs for using them in terror activities”. The report had found that Christians were “soft targets of organised Love Jihad” gangs. It may be mentioned here that some of the youths who joined Islamic State from Kerala were converted from Christianity. “A woman who is languishing in jail in connection with a terror case was converted from Christianity,” said the priest quoted above.
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