Bindu Sambat, a 48-year-old homemaker here, reacted to news that families could have left Palakkad to join the Islamic State (IS) jihadists in Syria or Iraq via Sri Lanka with alarm. She “realised” that one of the families could have been her daughter’s. Ms Sambat dialled the police and lodged a missing person complaint.
The reports had named her daughter Nimisha’s husband Isa and his brother Yehiya. Bindu had last seen Nimisha in May.
She was pregnant then and was expecting in August. Since May 18, they had been in touch only on WhatsApp, she said. They had communicated last on June 4 and since then Nimisha had been incommunicado, she claimed. Ms. Bindu told The Hindu that Nimisha was evasive about her location. She would occasionally dwell on peripheral things about her life in anonymity; she lunched on coleslaw, eggs and juice once, the climate was neither cold nor hot and Isa was always around.
Converted to IslamIntelligence and law enforcement officials said Nimisha had converted to Islam in 2013 while studying in a private dental college in Kasargode. She had done so at the instance of a popular Salafist group in south Kerala and had married Isa in the Islamic tradition in Kannur in October 2015. On November 7, 2015, Nimisha’s college authorities reported her missing.
According to officials, Ms. Nimisha claimed that she was with her husband Isa when produced before the local magistrate (479/15 Vidyanagar police) after she was traced on November 11.
Nimisha’s husband Isa himself was a recent convert like her and his brother Yehiya. They were born Bexon and Bestin respectively to Christian parents in Palakkad. Isa has a management degree. He and his brother retailed fabrics. Yahiya married one Mariam from Kochi.
The police said Nimisha’s was a love marriage. Her mother believes otherwise. There was no love, she claims, saying Nimisha had merely married “another convert” pointed out to her by the conservative elements who held her in sway. (The High Court had in 2015 allowed a writ petition moved by Ms. Sambat for a police enquiry into the episode.) Nimisha endearingly called her mother “Bindu Kutty” in her messages. “On June 4, she told me she loved me infinitely”, Ms. Bindu said.
