The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is likely to probe the alleged love Jihad case pertaining to the conversion to Islam of a 25-year-old Gujarat-based Keralite Hindu woman and her marriage with a Muslim youth under pressure and threats and the suspected bid by her ‘husband’ to sell her to Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists in Syria as sex slave. Presently, the case is being investigated by the Kerala Police.
The agency is planning to take over the investigation in the case considering its alleged ISIS angle. Almost all cases with alleged ISIS connections in the State are being investigated by it. Officials from the NIA’s Kochi unit have collected all available information concerning the case from the Ernakulam (Rural) Police.
The NIA had earlier expressed its readiness to take over the probe if directed by the court. The Kerala Police, who had on January 10 arrested two persons, Fayas Jamal (23) and Siyad (48), from Paravur near Kochi in connection with the case on the basis of a complaint lodged by the woman, have intensified the probe.
They will soon take Fayas and Siyad to Bangalore, where the woman had converted to Islam under pressure and was forced to marry Muslim youth Muhammad Riyas from Thalassery, Kannur for the evidence-gathering exercise. The police have already identified the religious centre in Bangalore where the woman had converted to Islam.
They have also identified the woman who was controlling this religious centre. Apart from Riyas, Fayas, Siyad and this woman, four persons from Kannur and two lawyers have also been named as accused in the case. It was Fayas, a close relative of Riyas, and Siyad who had arranged places for putting up the woman in Paravur when Riyas had brought her there last year.
Sources said that this was a case fit to be looked into by the NIA considering the alleged ISIS angle and its connection with Saudi Arabia to where her husband Riyas, first accused, had taken her allegedly with the intention of smuggling her to ISIS-ruled territories in Syria for selling to terrorists as sex slave. Riyas is said to be in Saudi Arabia still.
According to the complaint the woman had lodged with the police, she had met Riyas and fell in love with him when she was in Bangalore for a course between 2013 and 2015. Riyas had forced her to marry him by blackmailing her with some visuals of her that he had recorded during their intimate moments. He had allegedly forged her identity papers for registering the marriage.
The woman managed to go back to her parents in Gujarat after the marriage but Riyas moved a habeas corpus writ in the High Court. It is said that he had once again blackmailed her using the earlier visuals which forced her to go back to him. He then took her to Paravur where he kept her in captivity for several months with the help of some relatives.
Riyas took her to Saudi Arabia on a three-month visit visa last August with the alleged intention of taking her to ISIS controlled territories in Syria for selling to terrorists as sex slave. He had kept her in captivity in an apartment in Jeddah where she was forced to regularly watch videos showing the brutal ways in which ISIS men dealt with enemies.
It is said that this was done in order to develop within her hatred towards people of other religions and awe about the ISIS. It was also intended at creating sympathy within her towards terrorism and terrorists. However, these brainwashing techniques failed to beat the determination of the woman, a native of Pathanamthitta district.
From the flat in Jeddah, she secretly contacted her father who e-mailed a flight ticket to her. She escaped from the flat using a duplicate key when Riyas was out, took refuge in a neighbouring apartment whose owner arranged a taxi for her to the airport. A Kerala family she met at the Jeddah airport helped her in her trip to India.