Its almost 10 months since the gruesome murder of an 8-year old girl in Kathua. The circumstances under which her body was found had managed to antagonize the entire nation, and Indians in unison demanded justice for her. But lurking behind the protests by people, were anti-India forces who had hijacked the campaign to malign Hindus and embolden the (pseudo) saffron terror. This was happening under ISIS’s watch.
The girl was killed in the month of January, albeit, the actual protests began in the second half of April, when seven arrests were made by the J&K police. It is then that posters with tawdry comments on Hindus, began doing rounds on social media; by 17th April, Kerala police had found out that some of these posters were being circulated by certain ISIS supporters, and the aim was to cause communal disharmony.
The ID-Aadhil AX, who had designed the poster turned out to be IS module kingpin, from Kerala, his real name being–Shajeer Mangalasseri Abdulla. Shajeer was active on the social media under different aliases, and had been distilling a potent tincture for Jihad against India. The ID had been tracked by NIA as early as 2016 for passing on ISIS related incriminating material online, to his followers. He had also been running an ID– Did you know? on facebook and twitter, to purvey ISIS’s ideology among the masses. The ID is yet to be banned by twitter.
It’s no surprise that origin of many Pro-ISIS campaigns have been tracked to Kerala, which has been a fertile ground for anti-India forces to drop their roots. Unfortunately, by the time our intelligence agencies stumbled upon these links, the country’s reputation had taken a beating internationally. From the Hindi Film industry actors to Indian reporters, many IDs across the world had been innocuously rallying support for ISIS, by using the poster designed by Shajeer. It has been discovered that apps like Telegram, the Russia-based software, has gained popularity among many official ISIS channels, due to its higher encryption levels that makes it harder for governments to break into it, and orchestrate surveillance against its users.
The campaign in support of the Kathua rape victim was misused by anti-nationals and anti-social elements equally. It is now known that the man who had led the campaign from front, a self styled Gujjar activist, Talib Hussain, is behind the bars for attempting to rape one of his relatives.
A JNU student too has come forward to lodge a complaint against him. But what has been hidden from the people so far were his terror links. The man has been known to be a terrorist sympathizer, as confessed by his own relative. A day before the Nagrota base camp attack, Talib Hussain had few “special visitors” who had arrived in a SUMO; and he had instructed his wife to remain silent on the presence of these visitors at their home. Next day, in the wee hours, the Nagrota army camp was attacked, in which 7 army personnel were killed in action, which included two officers. This was on November 29th,2016.
Activist Talib Hussain with Lawyer of Kathua rape victim, and a picture from Nagrota Army camp when it came under attack
The intensity with which protests in support for Kathua rape victim were conducted, came very close to the protests after the “Shopian murder and rape case” of 2009, which kept the valley burning for almost 6 months. To give you a little background of the case- two women were washed ashore on the banks of the Rambiara river, in Shopian, in summer of 2009. One of the body was half naked, lying on dry sand, with blood dripping from the nose and sindoor smeared on her forehead, or so said one of the witnesses.
Deaths of the two women were claimed to be murders, carried out by a blood thirsty saffron campaigners in an attempt to annihilate Kashmiri muslims. In the subsequent clashes that broke out, 8 people lost their lives and some 400 suffered injuries. The case was handed over to CBI and the AIIMS was roped in to carry out the post-mortem; it did not shock many when the reports emerged that the evidences were fake. The vaginal swabs which the doctors in Shopian claimed to have tested belonged to unconnected women, the hymen of one the dead woman was found intact and at-least 6 witnesses testified that the dead bodies were not found half naked.
Be it Shajeer, be it Talib Hussain, or Kathua rape case’s similarity with Shopian murder case, the nefarious designs of anti-national forces behind the protests in J&K is now evident. The eight year old innocent girl from Rasana, Kathua, deserves justice, but as alert citizens of India we must prevent such incidents from being wantonly used by anti-India elements.