A converted muslim women Fatima Ba narrates her ordeal of how she once wanted to become a nurse but was abducted from her home and manipulated by religious vanguards and turned into an ISIS terrorist and landed in Afghanistan jail.
Directors :Sudipto Sen, Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Writers : Suryapal ,SinghSudipto Sen,Vipul Amrutlal Shah
Stars : Pranav MisshraAdah SharmaYogita Bihani
The movie stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani. It is scheduled to be released on 5 May 2023.
Premise and factual accuracy
The movie is captioned as being based on a real-life incident, while the reliability of the statistics shown are not backed by any real evidence. It makes a reference to Love Jihad propaganda in Kerala, where Muslim youth allegedly lure Hindu girls to convert them to Islam.
The teaser, released on 3 November 2022, featured Adah Sharma playing the character of Fathima Ba — a Hindu Malayali nurse — who had converted to Islam and joined the ISIS, before ending up in an Afghan jail. She identifies to be one of the 32,000 girls, from the Hindu and Christian communities, who are missing from Kerala and have been recruited to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after being converted to Islam. The claimed figures are widely inaccurate, being based on mistranslations, misquotes and extrapolations from misrepresentations of unrelated statistics.
The Observer Research Foundation in a 2019 report notes that about 60 to 70 individuals had joined ISIS from Kerala between 2014 and 2018. According to Indian government figures not more than a total of 100 – 200 Indians had joined the organization over the years, one of the smallest figures of any country with a substantial Muslim population. The US Department of State in its 2020 report on terrorism had documented that there were a total of 66 individuals from India who were affiliated with ISIS at that time.
The events portrayed in the movie seem to be inspired by four women from Kerala who converted to Islam and traveled with their husbands to Afghanistan to join ISIS between 2016 and 2018. They were part of a 21-member group from Kerala to join ISIS in 2016, remain incarcerated in Afghanistan since surrendering in 2019.
Opposition
Both Indian National Congress and Communist Party of India (Marxist) — the only two parties to have governed the state since Independence — have objected to the release of the movie for propagating communal misinformation. They have further alleged that the filmmakers are promoting the agenda of the Sangh Parivar of defaming Kerala and propagating the idea of “love jihad”, a Hindutva conspiracy theory. Responding to the allegations, producer Shah has said that “nothing we say will be without evidence” and that Sen had conducted four years of research for the movie .
After a Tamil Nadu-based journalist filed a complaint with the Kerala chief minister, by stating that false propaganda is being done against Kerala and communal harmony is being destroyed, Kerala state police chief Anil Kant directed the Thiruvananthapuram City Police to register a case based on a report by hi-tech crime inquiry cell of Kerala Police. However, based on legal counsel’s advice, as of 15 November 2022, an FIR was not filed. As of 9 November 2022, the movie is subject to an investigation.
Cast
- Adah Sharma as Shalini Unnikrishnan / Fatima Ba
- Yogita Bihani as Nimah
- Sonia Balani as Asifa
- Siddhi Idnani as Geetanjali
Production and release
The movie was produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who is also the creative director of the movie. It is scheduled to be released in theatres on 5 May 2023.
