Thiruvananthapuram: Rajya Sabha MP from CPI(M), and Journalist, John Brittas called on Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on Wednesday, to take action against the ‘mischievous’ teaser of the film ‘The Kerala Story’ for making false claims that 32,000 women from the state were converted to Islam and recruited to the terror outfit Islamic State. The letter comes a day after Kerala police chief Anil Kant directed the registration of a case on the complaint against Sudipto Sen’s movie ‘The Kerala Story’.
Brittas, in his letter, said that the claims in the teaser that the film is about the story of 32,000 women from Kerala who were radicalised to join the terror outfit ISIS ‘is absolutely rubbish and fallacious’. ‘Such dissemination of grossly false information may lead to inconceivable repercussions and unrest in the society and the same will amount to defaming the state as well. The false narrative is being massively spread over social media’. ‘It is not only derogatory in nature but also aimed at causing communal divide and tension between various religions, which, therefore, entails serious penal consequences’, he said in the letter.
The Rajya Sabha member also said that according to news reports back in 2019, the Home Ministry had put the number of women who were radicalised and recruited into ISIS from across the country at 155. The ground realities are in stark contradiction to what has been claimed in the teaser, he said and added ‘such mischievous actions are to be nipped in the bud’. ‘In these circumstances, considering the exigency, I strongly urge upon the ministry to take swift actions in this regard’, he said in the letter.
In his tweet, the MP said- ‘Teaser of ‘The Kerala Story’, falsely claims that 32000 women from Kerala were converted to IS & sent abroad. Being widely circulated, this severely threatens harmony, secularism & national unity apart from defaming Kerala. Wrote to @AmitShah ji & @ianuragthakur ji for urgent action’.
Teaser of ‘The Kerala Story’, falsely claims that 32000 women from Kerala were converted to IS & send abroad. Being widely circulated, this severly threatens harmony, secularism& national unity apart from defaming Kerala. Wrote to @AmitShah ji& @ianuragthakur ji for urgent action pic.twitter.com/spWh8su4l4
— John Brittas (@JohnBrittas) November 9, 2022
Earlier on Wednesday, Anil Kant, the director general of police in Kerala, directed Sparjan Kumar, the chief of the Thiruvananthapuram police department, to file a complaint against the cast and crew of the movie ‘The Kerala Story’ on Tuesday for allegedly presenting the region as a refuge for terrorists. The move came after a journalist from Tamil Nadu Aravindakshan B R wrote a letter to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan after having watched the teaser of the to-be-released movie. The journalist asked the Kerala government to call the director of the movie and investigate the veracity of the released teaser in which the character claimed that 32,000 girls from Kerala were being forcibly converted and then later joined the terrorist group ISIS.
The trailer, he said in the letter, narrates the story of a Muslim woman in front of an international border. ‘In the character played by actress Adha Sharma, she says that she used to be Shalini Unnikrishnan and wanted to serve people as a nurse. She says she was forcibly converted to Islam and renamed Fatima Ba, then joined ISIS and later imprisoned in Afghanistan’, the letter added. Further in the letter, he said the teaser portrayed India’s Kerala as a ‘terrorist state’ as he claimed the video claimed it was a ‘true story set in Kerala’.
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