The Jehadis Of The South

A Kerala Police intelligence operation tracking ISIS recruitment in the state uncovers alarming details.

- Jeemon Jacob

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) supplementary charge sheet against Moinudheen Parakadavath, filed on August 11, was the final piece of the puzzle in their case against the Omar Al Hindi ISIS module. The case had had its share of twists and turns—a plot to drive a truck into a crowd in Kochi in Kerala last year, aborted when its seven-member cell was arrested last October—and a deadly twist, the ringleader’s death in a US airstrike in Afghanistan this year.

Parakadavath, deported from the UAE on February 15 this year, was the seventh member of the ISIS cell busted by the NIA last year. At least 54 Keralites are believed to have joined the radical Islamist group over the last three years, the largest number from any Indian state. The NIA charge sheet in the Omar Al Hindi module was a revelation because it showed how in less than a year ISIS has gone from attracting recruits to its territories in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, to one where overseas handlers encouraged new converts to carry out deadly attacks on Indian soil.

Security agencies are not sure how many such cells are out there. The uncovering of the Omar Al Hindi module worried the Kerala Police eno ugh to launch ‘Operation Pigeon’, a surveillance programme, in May this year. The operation has revealed the existence of at least 60 other potential ISIS recruits in the state. The lowkey operation has added to Kerala’s already crowded threat matrix—Maoist attacks in the north (two top Maoists, Koppam Devarajan, a CPI (Maoist) central committee member, and Ajita alias Kaveri, were killed in a police ‘encounter’ in the Nilambur forests last November) and the RSS-CPI(M) political violence, which has seen the death of 17 people since May 2016.