'Attacked With Slurs Of Kaafir, Given Death Threats'; Dalit Man From Rajasthan Pays Price For Hailing The Kerala Story As A Film That Could Save Women

Abhishek Sargara, a 24-year-old man from the Jodhpur city of Rajasthan, has been forced to go underground for fear of a fatal attack on him.

Five days ago, he was thrashed by a group of seven-eight men, and left on the spot with threats of murder.

All that Abhishek had done to invite those death threats was that he put up a status message on WhatsApp that everyone must watch 'The Kerala Story' so their sisters and daughters are saved from conversion traps.

The film, which released on 5 May, is a fictionalised retelling of real stories where Hindu, atheist and Christian women from Kerala converted to Islam for marriage against the approval of their parents and went on to join the Islamic State in Afghanistan and Syria.

On 6 May, Abhishek watched the film and posted this on his WhatsApp: “Must Watch. The Kerala Story according to me, all the girl of this world should watch this film so that your sister and daughters can also be saved from this conversion and their life will be safe (sic)”.

The same evening, two men known to him, named Pintu Aman and Ali, found him in the streets and confronted him about his WhatsApp status. Pintu and Ali accused Abhishek of maligning the Muslim community and thrashed him. They were joined by six-seven other men, as per Abhishek.

He filed a police case against the assaulters the same day. Swarajya has accessed the FIR, and also talked to Abhishek over the phone.

Abhishek’s statement in the FIR (number 228/2023, filed at Udai Mandir police station of Jodhpur) states that Pintu, Ali and others used the slur of “kaafir” (a derogatory word for non-Muslims) as well as casteist jibes while thrashing him.  

“There was nothing in my status that was against any religion,” the statement says (translated from Hindi).

The FIR shows that the police named only Pintu as accused and booked him under IPC sections 341 (wrongful restraint), 323 (causing hurt), 506 (criminal intimidation) and 34 (common intention in criminal act).

As Abhishek belongs to a scheduled caste, sections of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989 have also been invoked.

Abhishek told Swarajya that he lives in a colony where about 90 houses belong to the Muslim community while only three families are Hindu. He said the two sides do not have any history of communal violence in that colony.

He said he identified four men from the group that thrashed him, out of whom two are less than 18 years of age. The other two are Pintu and Ali.

When Swarajya called up Udai Mandir police station today , constable Gowardhan, who received the call, said that Investigating Officer of the case, Umaid Sindh, was out of station and information on arrests made so far would not be available till he returned.

Abhishek told Swarajya that police had made four arrests including the two minors.

He said that ever since he was attached, he has stopped going for work and keeps himself underground.

Abhishek works as a salesman at a garment shop. He said that the only times he has come out of hiding is when he had to go to the police station to identify the culprits from a CCTV footage of the attack that the police have found.

Controversy around the film — reminder of The Kashmir Files last year

The film, The Kerala Story, has been produced and co-written by Amrutlal Shah, who has previously directed multi-starrer Bollywood films such as Ankhen, Waqt and Namastey London.

The film has been directed by Sudipto Sen and features actress Adah Sharma in the lead. She plays Shalini Unnikrishnan, wo is converted to Islam, married, and trafficked.

The film has polarised the public, the political class, and the media with one side applauding it for tackling contentious religious issues while the other side accusing it of Islamophobia.

Shortly before the film’s release, petitions were filed in the Kerala high court to order a stay on it.

The petitions were argued by senior advocate and Congress leader Kapil Sibal and Advocate Nizam Pasha, who controversially advocated for Hijab for Muslim women during the Hijab controversy last year by arguing that Hijab would help molesters identify Muslim women and spare them.

The high court, however, dismissed the petitions, arguing, “…ISIS should come and object. If these statements are offending someone, it is offending ISIS”.

The high court bench comprising Justices N Nagaresh and Sophy Thomas also said that Hindu sanyasis are routinely portrayed as smugglers in Hindi and Malayalam films, but no one protests against it.

The film was released on 5 May across Indian states as scheduled. However, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool government in West Bengal prohibited the film from screening in any cinema hall of the state.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan too gave a statement criticising it, calling it a product of Sangh Parivar’s “factory of lies”.

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who is Lok Sabha MP from Kerala, tweeted, “It may be *your* Kerala story. It is now *our* Kerala story”. His tweet however came under massive criticism and became a subject of mockery after an old tweet of his surfaced.

The tweet, posted in 2021, said, “I have been approached by Kerala mothers whose daughters are stuck in Afghanistan after having been taken there by their misguided husbands. I arranged a meeting w/ EAM Sushma Swaraj Ji for a constituent to plead her case, Obviously it’s as an MP that I’m aware of the situation”.

In Tamil Nadu, the opposition parties accused the state government of blocking the film after it was withdrawn from some screens. In Uttar Pradesh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath declared the film tax-free and announced it on Twitter.

Last year, The Kashmir Files by writer-director-producer Vivek Agnihotri faced similar controversy.

In Rajasthan’s Kota city, section 144 for imposed for a month after the film’s release. Violent incidents similar to the recent case in Jodhpur were reported from various states.

The cases include an incident in Uttar Pradesh where three Hindu youths were stabbed with a knife while they were exiting a cinema hall after watching The Kashmir Files. Ruckus erupted at a theatre in West Bengal during the film’s screening.