Terror In The Family- Kerala's ISIS Couples

The flight of young Kerala Muslim families shows how the poisonous lure of IS is now spreading through social media

- Jeemon Jacob

Residents of Padanna, a prosperous Kerala village, buoyed by Gulf remittances and replete with gleaming Audis and Pajeros, recall Dr K.P. Ijas as a friendly and caring man. The 28-year-old had studied medicine in China and worked at the local primary health centre in the village in Kerala’s Kasargod district. His wife Rifila was a dentist, who had studied at the Century Dental College in Kasargod, and the couple had briefly practised at a medical centre in Thiruvallur in Kozhikode. They had a son, Ayaan, not yet two, and Rifila was pregnant with their second child.

Then, on May 28, the Ijas family vanished. Over the next few days, the extended family discovered, Ijas’s younger brother Shihas, 24, and his wife Ajmala, 22, also in an advanced stage of pregnancy, had gone missing as well. Likewise his cousin Ashfaq Majeed, 25, who ran a hotel business in Mumbai, his wife Shamsiya, 23 and their 18-month-old daughter Ayisha.