Closer to closure: On the Savad arrest and Professor T.J. Joseph case in Kerala

Terror networks can be dismantled only by disabling those at their top

The long arm of the law finally caught up with Savad, a fugitive (a person who is running away or hiding from the police or a dangerous situation) in the notorious (famous for something bad) case of chopping off the palm of a college professor in Kerala’s Thodupuzha, 13 years after the crime. Sleuths of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested him, the first accused, from a village in northern Kerala’s Kannur where he was living under a fake identity, on January 10. The agency will rightly seek his custody in order to unearth (to discover proof or some other information, especially after careful searching) the latent (present, but not yet active, developed, or obvious) network of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI), which is believed to have planned the barbaric (extremely cruel and unpleasant) assault (a violent attack) on the professor in July 2010 and arranged for Savad’s life in hiding thereafter. Religious extremists (someone who has beliefs that most people think are unreasonable and unacceptable) targeted Professor T.J. Joseph on his way home from church for drafting a question paper with supposedly a ‘blasphemous’ reference to the Prophet; actually, it was an adaptation (a film, book, play, etc. that has been made from another film, book, play, etc) of a passage from an essay on a screenplay written by noted Malayalam film-maker P.T. Kunju Muhammad. The State was able to ensure that the incident did not spark communal (belonging to or used by a group of people rather than one single person) tensions, but it set off a series of irreversible (not possible to change; impossible to return to a previous condition) losses for the professor. With the Catholic church, which managed the college where he was teaching, turning its back on him, he was terminated (to cause something to end or stop) from service, with a recall on the eve of his retirement made possible, ruefully, by the suicide of his disconsolate (extremely sad and disappointed) wife, as he recalls in his memoirs, A Thousand Cuts (2020).

The NIA took over the investigation in 2011. While it was able to get the conviction of 19 of the accused for various offences including those under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the two-phase trial, the fact that the key accused remained at large prevented its closure. The agency announced a bounty of ₹10 lakh for information on Savad. His arrest has shifted the focus to the conspirators (a person who plans secretly with other people to do something bad, illegal, or against someone’s wishes) who masterminded the assault and the underlings (a person of low rank and little authority who works for someone more important) who harboured (to think about or feel something, usually over a long period) him. Given that it was the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India that metamorphosed (a complete change) into the National Development Front and subsequently into the PFI, the key to averting its resurgence (an increase of activity or interest in a particular subject or idea which had been forgotten for some time) in another avatar lies in uprooting the entire network of its underground supporters. Prof. Joseph has, as his words suggest, overcome any ill-will or feeling of vengeance (the punishing of someone for harming you or your friends or family, or the wish for such punishment to happen) towards his assailants (a person who attacks another person), but he rues that action against the foot soldiers of religious terror would not guarantee peace and harmony in society. For that to happen, their handlers should be brought to book. It is vital that the NIA stays the course and prosecutes the key accused. The terror network that plotted the heinous (Very bad and Shocking) attack must be disabled entirely.

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