When the teaser of “The Kerala Story” was released, there was a lot of uproar on social media condemning the story line. Though Producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah gave many interviews to media stating that the tragedy of Kerala is that, the girls are converted and then pushed into flesh trade. I do not wish to comment on the movie and its dramatization but the theme of the movie is near to the brutal reality. There is a big racket, these fraudsters and flesh traders stick posters on public places, after seeing the posters many fall for the offer because on those posters, they say the recruitment is free and no money will be collected from the seekers, even for visa processing and air ticket. Then they are lured into the handsome package. Then they gradually tell the woman if you get converted you will get more money and this conversion would be for employment. Many women agree to get converted because their aim is to get that job on foreign land. If you remember the story of three women who escaped from the clutches of a human trafficking network in Kuwait last year you will understand how pathetic women’s condition in Kerala is. Those girls were not only converted but also sold to some Arabs, following the intervention of some social organisations there. These days even Kerala Police suspect many more such people may have been trapped in West Asian countries.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) also questioned the three women who returned to Kerala after they complained that their ‘oppressors’ often took the name of terrorist groups in Islamic State-controlled areas, and threatened to take them there if they protested and informed family members back home. Police then arrested a local agent named Ajumon who had put out advertisements and recruited some of these women as babysitters and part-time domestic workers. In the interrogations it was revealed that at least 30 girls were sent by him and 15 returned to the country.
After preliminary inquiry, police found out that the issue of selling those girls to ISIS was a kind of threat. Then the Kochi Police commissioner Nagaraj Chakilam did comb operations and exposed many such agents. MK Gassali, alias Majeed, hailing from north Kerala was the kingpin behind the trafficking racket. MK Gassali, a Dubai-based Kannur native demanded a ransom of Rs three lakh to release the women when their families approached him. Then the husband of one of the women approached the Malayali group and sent its members WhatsApp videos and voice clips featuring the torture the trio were facing. The collective approached the Kuwaiti authorities forcing Gassali to release them.
These agents stick posters in the city to attract women from poor backgrounds. When the woman approaches them, they give them wrong promises that they would be babysitters, or working in day care centres or house help and taken care of well. These women don’t even realise that they are sold unless they go to those respective countries and face the reality. In many cases to bypass Indian regulations, the racketeer takes the women to Sharjah on a visit visa and later shifts them to Kuwait by road. In Kuwait, they are sold to rich Arab families for ’10 lakh to 20 lakh’ each. The victims realised, to their horror, a few days later that they were trapped. They are subjected to torture by their new ‘owners’. Their phones, passports and everything get confiscated and hence they cannot even contact their families back home to inform them about their fate.
There is another kind of scam that lures girls to get converted because Gulf migrants are highly sought bridegrooms in Kerala. Looking at the lavish lifestyle and the riches of bridegrooms, women of other religions are asked to convert and then they are shown to these rich men. Kerala has a lot of fascination for Muslim countries. When the first gulf boom started in early 1960s Keralites were among the first ones to spot this and they started moving to the Gulf for work. Over the decades Keralites moved up the ladder in the Middle East economy and a big percentage of business owners in the Middle East are from Kerala. Most of these business houses tend to hire the majority of their work force from Kerala. This also increases the number of Malayalis working in the Middle East.
In 2008, they numbered more than 2.5 million. Nearly 80 percent of Indians living in Kuwait are from Kerala according to the 2008 survey commissioned by the Department of Non-resident Keralite Affairs. Arabs settled in Kerala, especially around the present-day Malappuram district have a huge population. Since the mass invading of Muslims and Christians in Kerala the region is always under threat for Hindu girls. The other communities are heavily funded by Islamic countries to lure Hindu population into Islam so that the entire state remains in their control.
Once Kerala, the small beautiful coastal Indian state that is popularly known as God’s Own Country, is a land that has welcomed people from different parts of the world and from different races, cultures, religions and traditions over the centuries. Not only have these people settled in Kerala but they have also assimilated and contributed to the culture of this wonderful land. Kerala has historically been home to the largest Jewish settlement in the whole of South Asia, dating back to the time when Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans and its native Jews massacred or driven out by the European Christian hordes. Kerala also had significant European and Muslim settlements along the Malabar (and Tulunadu-Karnataka) coasts since the 11th century AD at least. The single largest group of foreigners were Peninsular Arab traders, many of whom settled down, married local Malayali women of high-ranking castes and prospered in their newly adopted homeland. Their descendents form a proportion of the region’s Muslim community (Mappilas). The Arabs built numerous mosques along coastal Malabar (Northern-Kerala) and for several centuries Arabic was the de facto language of trade and commerce along the Kerala-Tulunadu coast and nearby Sri Lanka. Year by year the Muslim population is on rise and this beautiful state is turning into the Islamic state by posing a threat to Hindu girls.
