The closure report in the missing case states that it was not a case of love jihad — it also said there is no proof to say she is dead.
Jesna Maria James is missing since 22 March 2018. (Sourced)
Jesna Maria James, a 20-year-old second-year BCom student, left her home at Mukkoottuthara in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district around 9 am on 22 March, 2018. Little did her parents, Fancy and James Joseph, then know that it would be the beginning of a prolonged search for the youngest of their three children.
The student of St Dominic’s College in Kanjirappally was supposed to visit her aunt at Punchavayal in Mundakayam, hardly 20 km from her home. She took an autorickshaw and later a local bus to Erumely, before boarding another bus to Mundakayam.
And then, the bespectacled women vanished into the blue.
Five years later, the CBI ended its probe to find Jesna, citing a lack of any substantial evidence in the case. The premier probe agency, however, ruled out the possibility of the young woman converting to another religion, a narrative that was peddled by vested political interests.
She had not committed suicide either, the CBI said in its 52-page closure report submitted to the Chief Judicial Magistrate court in Pathanamthitta.
The CBI had taken up the probe based on a high court directive issued on 19 February, 2021.
Vested interests raised the so-called “love jihad” bogey even as Jesna’s relatives and collegemates staged a sit-in, demanding the authorities find the woman. Despite the Union government and the Supreme Court ruling out any instance of “love jihad” in Kerala, a major section of the powerful Catholic Church refused to agree.
Instead, it shared the Sangh Parivar’s theory of Islamic terrorists faking love to lure young women of other faiths and issued frequent edicts to keep teenage Christian girls out of harm’s way.
Jesna is frequently mentioned in many of the pastoral letters issued on behalf of senior Catholic bishops in Kerala.
Multiple investigations could not track Jesna’s presence anywhere beyond Erumeli, though the probe took investigators to various states. The CBI, through Interpol, issued a yellow alert in 191 countries to find the woman in April 2022. The yellow notice is a global alert for a missing person.
Throughout these years, the Catholic bishops have been steadfastly maintaining that Jesna was a victim of “love jihad”.
BJP state president K Surendran found an opportunity in her disappearance to reach out to the Catholic Christians, saying Jesna’s case was a classic example of “love jihadis” targeting young Christian girls.
Right-wing Hindutva propaganda machines went a step further, saying Jesna was spotted in Syria with two children, and she and her husband were furthering the cause of the Islamic State.
The CBI’s closure report, however, categorically ruled out the “love jihad” angle. For Fancy and James, their daughter is still missing — but alive.
The CBI report exposed vested interests stoking Islamophobia to create divisions and unrest in society.
It stated that religious conversion and extremism were not the driving forces behind her disappearance. The CBI informed the court that it had investigated all centres of religious conversions across the country, as well as offices of so-called extremist Islamic organisations before concluding that they had no role in Jesna’s disappearance.
The agency even checked with Kozhikode-based Arya Samaj, which converts non-Hindus to the Hindu community. The report also said there was no concrete evidence to establish that she had been murdered or committed suicide.
It suggested she could be still alive.
The CBI sleuths investigated several so-called suicide points across the country. It also went through the national registry of unnatural deaths over the past five years and conducted searches based on it across Kerala, Chennai, and Mumbai.
Expert divers were roped in to search the Lower Periyar dam in the Idukki district following a suspicion that her body could have been dumped there. Brain-mapping tests conducted on Jesna’s father and her friend did not find anything suspicious.
The CBI further said Jesna’s circle of friends was limited, and she was always confined to her private world. She was never active on social media and had not taken her keypad-based mobile phone while leaving home.
After receiving the report, the court issued a notice to James to appear before it on 19 January to record his response to the findings by the CBI.
When contacted, James sounded optimistic. “I feel hopeful, as the central agency has found that she had not been murdered or committed suicide. Nobody can indoctrinate my daughter, and I have always viewed such campaigns with suspicion,” he told South First.
“I am optimistic that I will reconnect with her one day,” the father said.
The CBI’s report criticised the local police for their laxity during the “golden hour”, the first 48 hours after she had gone missing, despite receiving a complaint from her father.
Later, the Crime Branch wing of Kerala police took over the probe and investigated officials. Former DGP Tomin Thachankary, and former police superintendent in Pathanamthitta KG Simon often claimed they were about to make breakthroughs in the case.
Now, the retired officers blame the Covid-induced lockdown and other external factors for hampering the investigation, which required them to frequently travel to different states.
The investigating agencies have collectively questioned 400-odd people, and recorded the statements of around 130 people, including Jesna’s father, brother, sister, and a friend to whom she had allegedly sent a message saying, “I am going to die.”
Additionally, over a lakh telephone calls that passed through the mobile towers in the locality were also verified.
“The CCTV footage retrieved by the police showed Jesna getting down at Erumely and boarding a Mundakayam-bound bus on 22 March. Her aunt’s home at Punchavayal is very close to Mundakayam. Her whereabouts after boarding the bus are not known,” Simon recalled.
Three years ago, then-Kerala state police chief Loknath Behera announced a reward of ₹5 lakh to those providing credible information on the missing woman. Nothing credible came through, though investigators received several calls claiming a woman looking like Jesna was sighted at several places
Photographs of Jesna were uploaded onto the websites and forwarded to the WhatsApp groups of the Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala police. Still, Jesna could not be found.
.The Crime Branch probe earlier revealed that Jesna had left home according to a well-thought-out plan.
However, a section of the Church and the Sangh Parivar forces have been frequently crying wolf by spreading the “love jihad” narrative, making the minority Muslim community feel the heat.
Earlier, there were rumours that Jesna had enrolled in a Muslim religious study centre at Ponnani in Malappuram after converting to Islam. On several occasions, pro-Sangh Parivar Hindu Aikya Vedi in Kerala had alleged that police were hiding “explosive information” in the case to help “anti-national forces”.
It claimed hundreds of young women had gone missing from Kerala, and the police were reluctant to probe many such cases, a fake narrative that even a movie, Kerala Story, promoted in 2023, just before the Karnataka Assembly polls and endorsed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Manufactured in Kerala and exported nationwide to fuel Islamophobia, many believed tales of “love jihad” were being peddled through social media platforms to cater to the credulous North Indian minds and to confuse Kerala Christians.
The state unit of the BJP used the “love jihad” bogey as a campaign issue in the 2021 Assembly election but lost even the lone seat it had earlier. The party had promised to bring in legislation against “love jihad” if voted to power.
But party leaders have been remaining tight-lipped whenever asked why the Union government has not passed legislation banning “love jihad”.
On 27 January, 2020, Rekha Sharma, the National Commission for Women (NCW) chairperson, said in a television interview that “love jihad” existed in Kerala. Her revelation was based on a “detailed investigation”, she claimed.
However, RTI responses from the NCW revealed that her “investigation” was a three-day visit to Kerala to interact with Hadiya’s family.
Three years ago, the Syro-Malabar segment of the Catholic Church alleged that a dozen Christian women had fallen prey to “love jihad” and were taken to Syria from Kerala. It withdrew the allegation after it was asked to provide evidence.
Within a few weeks of the Church’s allegation, the then-Union minister of state for home affairs, G Kishan Reddy, informed Parliament on 4 February, 2020, that none of the central agencies had received any reports of “love jihad” in Kerala.
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