Disproportionately high recruitment from one religious community into Police Intelligence

This report from Janam TV says that in the State police intelligence, posts under the ADGP have a disproportionately high number of recruits from a certain community.

The violent Islamist hartal in Kerala following Kathua rape case in Kashmir

Three months since the alleged rape and murder of a Muslim girl by Hindus in Kathua, Kashmir, there was an campaign in the mainstream and social media against the crime. But it spiralled out of control on 16 April 2018 when peaceful protests organised via social media by all communities in Kerala got hijacked by Jihadis. The hartal was worst in the Malabar region. Takbir slogans were raised, police were pelted with stones, roads blocked and only Muslims allowed to pass, Hindu owned shops were trashed and looted. The looting of K.R Bakers in Tanur earned the hartal the nickname "Onnam bakery lahala"(first bakery mutiny).

This hartal showcased the effectiveness of social media in organising sudden protests. Although claimed to be spontaneous, this hartal is suspected to be a planned rehearsal or a "testing the waters" for an Islamist uprising in the future.

Even though many political parties had backed the hartal, the most notable aspect was that the active and violent ones were all Muslims and they acted as one across party lines. SDPI, Youth League amd  DYFI workers were seen acting together.

ISIS link

The first connection of IS came in the form of online posters with the name Aadhil AX inciting protests for the victim. This ID was the IS handler for Kerala, Shajeer Mangalasseri Abdulla. Audio clips of Rashid Abdulla, another IS handler and recruiter that incited jihad were also circulated. It is assumable that the hartal was hijacked by his followers in Kerala who operate in Jihadi front groups like SDPI and PFI.

Police Response

The response of the police was quite lacking. They were caught completely unaware and later admitted that there was an intelligence failure. In many places the police remained helpless and suffered stone-pelting, assault and man-handling. There was an attempt to drag a policeman into a mosque to create a false event of police excess towards their faith. Riot police had to be deployed in many places and lathi charges were carried out.

Around 1500 who directly took part in the violence were arrested but the investigation into how this hartal turned violent, was botched from the beginning. The police arrested five non-Muslim admins of a Whatsapp group created to organise the peaceful hartal while the Islamists who hijacked it escaped. With the LDF in power, there is a possibility that the police investigation was subverted to help the Left-Islamist agenda.

Media Coverage

Except for a few Hindu right wing media groups, the mainstream media tried their best to cover up the Islamist violence and destruction. They had used terms like Whatsapp hartal and Social Media hartal to describe it instead of Islamist hartal or anti-Hindu hartal. With the arrested five being non-Muslim and one of  them being a low-level Shiv-Sena activist, the Left-Islamist media immediately switched to blaming the RSS for planning the hartal. Even the Chief-Minister plus Home-Minister Pinarayi Vijayan described it as Whatsapp hartal by RSS, in the state assembly.