October 09, 2017: Reports of Love Jihad have again scaled the country with the mother of yet another converted Keralite girl seeking probe from the NIA. Bindu Sampath from Kerala has requested the Supreme Court to order a probe in light of her daughter Nimisha (now Fathima) going missing in 2016 whilst pregnant. She recently gave birth to a baby girl in the ISIS state of Afghanistan (Khorasen province) where she is believed to have migrated with her husband Bexen.
Reports of girls being tricked into converting to Islam have been surfacing since 2016 when 21 boys and girls had gone missing from Kerala among which 6 have been killed in drone attacks in Afghanistan.
In light of events like Hadiya, Bindu filed an impleading application with the help of her lawyer Aishwariya Bhatti which stated, "The incidents of forcible conversions and indoctrination is not an isolated incident, but a well-oiled scheme". Bindu also said that the government should investigate and neutralize the possible threat to the country by directing the investigation to the NIA, R & AW and IB.
"Love Jihad" or "Romeo Jihad" by definition is an activity where young Muslim men target non-Muslim young girls for conversion to Islam by posing as lovers.
Although there is no evidence to these claims, the application drafted by Bindu and her lawyer says that the Jihad Romeos are given 2 weeks to find a girl from a non-Muslim community and 6 months to convert her to Islam. If the girl shows no interest in the first two weeks, they move on to another girl. Shockingly, the day Bindu's application raised any allegations in the SC; the Kerala government submitted their counter affidavit in the Hadiya case.
The Kerala government rejected the theories of "love jihad" and reported that after thorough investigation of the said case, there were no scheduled offenses reported. Bindu urged the court to properly look into the incident to avoid any future damage. As per News Minute's reporter Megha Varier, the accused in the application were the SDPI and a man named Sajjad Rahman who she says cajoled and influenced her daughter when they met in a coaching class in Thiruvananthapuram. Bindu also claims that Nimisha's friends in her dental college at Kasargod influenced her to convert to Islam and marry Bexen.
Cases like these have surfaced the upper crust of the court's eye but parents like Bindu and KM Ashokan (Hadiya's father) remain helpless and grief struck to have to part with their daughters. Bindu mentions that she has been unable to find any respite or relief in securing the well-being of her daughter. She quotes the media reports of Hadiya and the 21 gone missing to suggest ample proof of conspiracy where individuals con young girls and entice them for the purpose of involvement in the "terrorist and anti-national activities" of Jihad.
Prepared by Tanya Kathuria of Newsgram. Twitter: @TanyaKathuria97