The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Wednesday announced the arrest of Meerankutty Savad, the first accused in the sensational Thodupuzha palm-chopping case, who had been on the run for 13 years.
The central investigation agency had announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for information on Savad in 2023. The 38-year-old PFI member, who is from Asamannoor village in Ernakulam district of Kerala, has been absconding ever since the incident, which occurred on July 4, 2010.
The NIA had launched a massive hunt for Savad, a native of Ernakulam rural district, in India as well as abroad, including West Asia.
The arrest was made months after a special NIA Court in Kochi last year found six individuals guilty, including one who played a direct role in the infamous 13-year-old hand-chopping case of a college professor TJ Joseph in Kerala. All the six convicts were alleged to be the members of now banned Islamic outfit Popular Front of India (PFI).
A total of 19 accused have so far been convicted for various offences under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and UA(P) Act in the case. Of them, three have been convicted for life and 10 others sent to eight years Rigorous Imprisonment (RI) and fine. All the accused in the case were either leaders or activists/cadres of the now banned PFI and Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), and were actively involved in the criminal conspiracy.
The right hand of TJ Joseph, professor of Newman College in Thodupuzha in Idukki district, was chopped off allegedly by activists of PFI in 2010 for allegedly blaspheming Prophet Muhammad and the Quran in a question paper he had set.
The attack took place while he was returning home with his family after attending a Sunday mass at a church in Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam.
The controversy surrounded a question paper the professor had prepared for an internal B.Com examination. The professor had extracted a paragraph from the book ‘Thirakathayude Reethisasthram’, written by Malayalam director PT Kunju Muhammed, and wanted to test the students on punctuation. The short story he selected revolved around a mentally unstable schizophrenic nameless villager whom Joseph gave the name ‘Mohammed’.
The attack had exposed the PFI’s nefarious and violent intent and designs to terrorise people and society by targeting the critics of Islam and prominent persons of other religions, and to enforce the decisions of ‘Dar-ul-Khada’, their pseudo Taliban styled court.
The NIA has been consistently tightening the noose around the PFI across India. Several cases registered by the agency against PFI have revealed a conspiracy to overthrow India’s democratically elected government and establish an Islamic State in the country by 2047.
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