The Kerala police’s anti-terrorist squad is probing a complaint by a 15-year-old boy who returned from Leicester in the UK about how his mother and her partner had persuaded him to join the Islamic State.

The partner, Ansar, is the younger brother of Siddique, a convict in the Kanakamala IS module case. The mother, who worked as a nurse in the UK, was a Christian and converted to Islam after her marriage to a Muslim. An FIR has been registered in the case under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) based on the boy’s complaint.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) had in October 2016 busted an IS-inspired terror cell, referred to as the Kanakamala IS module case. The cell had allegedly planned to carry out terror attacks
in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Siddique was released from prison early this year after being in jail for three years. Police sources said the NIA was interested in the boy’s complaint.

The teenager’s mother hailed from Nedumangad in the suburbs of Thiruvananthapuram and had married his biological father, a Muslim from Pandalam in Pathanamthitta district.

The couple, along with their son and daughter, moved to the UK after the pandemic in 2021 from Saudi Arabia, where the mother worked as a nurse. The former couple also have an infant daughter.

The FIR states that Ansar stayed in the teenager’s room in Leicester, where he used to show him propaganda videos of the IS, including violent killings, and motivated him to join the terrorist group. The boy informed the police that Ansar had taught him and his mother how to make bombs in a pressure cooker.

The mother sent her son to Thiruvananthapuram with her sister in July, where Siddique received them at the airport. Siddique put him in a shelter home at Kallambalam in Thiruvananthapuram district.

Ravada Chandrasekhar, Kerala’s director-general of police, told The Telegraph: “At this juncture, there is no need to transfer the probe to the NIA. All aspects of what the boy had confided to the police are being probed in detail.”

Police sources said that when the boy’s father realised that his wife was in a relationship with Ansar, he returned to Kerala. The Kerala police have already interrogated the mother a few times, who is staying at one of her relatives’ homes. It’s learned that she had confided to the police that her son used to harm his sisters, which forced her to send him to Kerala.