An NIA court sentenced six terrorists of the banned organization Popular Front of India (PFI) in the case of Thodupuzha Newman College, Prof. TJ Joseph’s brutal hand-chopping incident of 2010. Three of them were sentenced to life imprisonment and three to three years in prison. Of the eleven who completed the second phase of the trial, five were acquitted due to lack of evidence. Thirteen of those who faced trial in the first phase were convicted by the court and eighteen were released.
It should be noted that the first accused in the case, Sawad, is still absconding. As in the first phase of the trial, the court has said that in the second phase of the trial, terrorist activities have been proved in the case. This is not an ordinary case. There are no guarantees that one will be accused of blasphemy and attacked in the future.
Thirteen years after the incident, the current verdict is a lesson for Kerala on many levels. The incident shocked the country. The Taliban model of punishment was implemented by radical religious courts in Kerala. It has now become clear that elaborate planning and massive assistance, including financial, were behind this heinous crime.
Kerala had become a paradise for Islamic terrorists who committed this heinous crime long before the incident in question took place. The activities of the fundamentalist organization Jamaat-e-Islami, the highly provocative slogans of ‘SIMI’ that emerged from it, the atmosphere of hatred created by the terrorist Abdul Nasser Madani, and the destructive activities of the organization NDF formed after the banning of ‘SIMI’ led to the hand-chopping of the college teacher in the name of religion. Politicians and authorities either turned a blind eye or covertly supported such radical Islamist terrorists.
Before this incident took place, the organization called NDF had carried out offensive propaganda and many acts of violence and killings in the name of religion. The National Development Front (NDF) was a Sunni Muslim organization set up in Kerala in 1994. Neither those who ruled Kerala nor the political parties who led it were ready to sincerely condemn all this or to isolate those who do this in society. The so-called secular Muslims remained silent.
This led to a college teacher’s hand being chopped off over a question paper. Instead of blaming those who did this, the ruling and opposition parties cruelly isolated the victim. The authorities of the college where this teacher taught were not kind at all. These people did not open their eyes even though the victim teacher’s wife committed suicide because she could not bear the pain.
It is the same organization that beheaded eight human lives at Marad beach near Kozhikode out of religious fanaticism and also chopped a teacher’s limbs in Thodupuzha. Those who stood with the religious terrorists in the Marad incident were not ready to deny them in Thodupuzha as well. Many criminals got away because the CBI did not investigate the Marad case in time.
Despite the request of the Judicial Commission, no attempt was made to bring out the conspirators. Many who walk under the cloak of respectability today have a role in creating such a situation. It was only because the Central Investigation Agency (NIA) investigated the hand-chopping case that at least some of the accused could be punished.
At that time, several officers were hand in glove with the terrorists revealed Prof. Joseph in his autobiography. There is another point that this teacher, who says that he is not the person to speak about the punishment received by the accused, points out. The fact that the teacher said that he was attacked in the name of a primitive creed and that his attackers were also victims of this creed, is as important as the verdict of the court that convicted the perpetrators. This inverted religious belief is creating unrest all over the world for many reasons. Those who believe in humanity and want to see peace cannot turn away from this reality. Is it time to stop defending the barbarism that kills people in the name of religion?
