Even as debates are raging in Kerala over whether love Jehad is a myth or reality and about the allegations of extremist connections of certain mixed marriages, the State police have started looking into suspicious conversions and such marriages in the Malabar region, according to reports.
Though the Home Department, being looked after by Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, is reticent over the suspicions being aired about mixed marriages, the police are said to have had a change of mind about the matter of late. They are now looking into specific instances of some 35 mixed marriages which had preceded or followed conversion into Islam.
Though the general argument is that these are love marriages between men and women of different religions and these have nothing to do with extremism, the police have a feeling that all such marriages may not be related to love affairs. One report quoted officials as saying that there was reason to view 25 out of these 35 recent mixed marriages with suspicion.
The Director General of Police is said to have instructed the officials in Kasaragod, Kannur, Malappuram and Palakkad districts to look into the instances of certain recent conversion marriages. Such an initiative has been taken in the wake of allegations about several persons from the Malabar region joining global terror force Islamic State (ISIS).
At least four of the 21 persons from Kasaragod and Palakkad districts who had allegedly left the country to join the ISIS were converts into Islam. However, a top police official based in Kannur said that he was unaware of any such serious probe. “I don’t know whether such a formal probe is going on apart from the usual examinations into suspicious conversions,” he said.
The debate on whether love Jehad is a myth or reality and the reported inquiry into the suspicious conversion marriages are taking place in the context of the case pertaining to the conversion into Islam of Akhila, a 25-year-old Hindu woman who assumed the name of Hadia after embracing Islam, and her marriage to a Muslim youth.
Hadia alias Akhila is now staying with her parents at their house at TV Puram, Vaikom in Kottayam district after the High Court annulled her marriage and the National Investigation Agency is currently looking into matters relating to her conversion and marriage as per instructions from the Supreme Court.
The investigation into the mysterious conversions and mixed marriages are being held at the level of officials in the rank of Deputy Inspector of Police. It is said that the police would hand over cases in which concrete factors available for suspecting extremist links would be handed over to the NIA. “As of now, I don’t know about any such cases,” the Kannur-based official said.
However, Muslim leaders are rejecting allegations of extremist and ISIS connections of religious conversions and mixed marriages as just figments of imagination of the Sangh Pariwar organizations. “These allegations have been there for a long time. They have not been able to prove anything so far,” said a Jama’at-e-Islami leader from Kozhikode.