The National Investigation Agency's (NIA) supplementary chargesheet against Moinudheen Parakadavath, filed on August 11, was the final piece of the puzzle in their case against the Omar Al Hindi ISIS module. The case had had its share of twists and turns, a plot to drive a truck into a crowd in Kochi in Kerala last year, aborted when its seven-member cell was arrested last October-and a deadly twist, the ringleader's death in a US airstrike in Afghanistan this year.

Parakadavath, deported from the UAE on February 15 this year, was the seventh member of the ISIS cell busted by the NIA last year. At least 54 Keralites are believed to have joined the radical Islamist group over the last three years, the largest number from any Indian state. The NIA chargesheet in the Omar Al Hindi module was a revelation because it showed how in less than a year ISIS has gone from attracting recruits to its territories in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, to one where overseas handlers encouraged new converts to carry out deadly attacks on Indian soil.

Security agencies are not sure how many such cells are out there. The uncovering of the Omar Al Hindi module worried the Kerala Police enough to launch 'Operation Pigeon', a surveillance programme, in May this year. The operation has revealed the existence of at least 60 other potential ISIS recruits in the state. The low-key operation has added to Kerala's already crowded threat matrix-Maoist attacks in the north (two top Maoists, Koppam Devarajan, a CPI (Maoist) central committee member, and Ajita alias Kaveri, were killed in a police 'encounter' in the Nilambur forests last November) and the RSS-CPI(M) political violence, which has seen the death of 17 people since May 2016.

ISIS recruits had till now managed to stay ahead of the state police. Najeeb Abdul Raheem, 23, an MTech student from Malappuram, became the latest Malayali to join the ISIS ranks in Afghanistan. On August 26, his mother Khamarunnissa received a terse message on social media app Telegram, the same one received by families of ISIS recruits reaching territories controlled by the group in the Khorasan province of Afghanistan: "He is in the way of the Jihad."

Kerala's public tryst with ISIS began in May 2016. The state was mortified by news that 21 educated, upper middle-class youth had upped and left for ISIS-controlled territories in Afghanistan. The incident caught the police and central intelligence agencies completely off guard. And this was because India had thus far resisted ISIS's poisonous appeal. The world's third largest Muslim population had contributed just 60 recruits to a global volunteer army that human rights agencies estimated to be 100,000-strong.

On June 3, Union home minister Rajnath Singh listed the banned terrorist organisation's inability to get a toehold in India as one of the achievements of the Narendra Modi-led BJP government. Over 90 ISIS sympathisers have been arrested across the country. But of the Indian recruits to travel to ISIS territories, a majority hail from Kerala. They are also well-educated, most are engineers, doctors and MBA degree holders. Kerala's strong undercurrent of radicalisation could be one reason for this-between 1977 and 2006, the state has seen the emergence of Islamist groups like the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), the banned Islamic Sevak Sangh floated by Abdul Nasser Madani and the National Development Front, now rechristened as Popular Front of India (PFI). The transnational ISIS, however, is a new challenge.

Of the 54 people from Kerala suspected to have joined ISIS, four are believed to have already been killed in Afghanistan. Investigations have found that ISIS had struck roots in the state as far back as 2014 with modules sponsoring religious conversions and trying to motivate professionals to join its fold in Afghanistan and Syria.

The tipping point from indoctrination to plotting mayhem came in July last year when intelligence agencies began tracking an individual named 'Amir Ali' who had been posting violent messages in Malayalam on Facebook. Ali, investigators discovered, was none other than Shajeer Mangalassery Abdullah, 36, a bright civil engineer from Sulthan Bathery in Kerala's northern Wayanad district. A former PFI member, he had worked in Dubai for 12 years. In June last year, he left Dubai for Afghanistan, travelling via Iran. He took an associate along with him, Moinudheen Parakadavath, 25. Parakadavath, a native of Kasargod district, was working as a sales executive in Abu Dhabi and had been an active member of the Mangalassery group. The two had gone to Mashhad in Iran, hoping to reach ISIS territory in Afghanistan, but Mangalassery then directed his companion to return to Abu Dhabi and coordinate activities in Kerala. The NIA has unearthed frequent communications between Mangalassery and Parakadavath over the encrypted service, Telegram. From his Afghan redoubt, Mangalassery had launched a social media group, 'Ansar ul-Khilaaf-Kerala' on Telegram.

The Kerala ISIS module was launched in October 2015. Shajeer created 'The Gate', another Telegram group, and frequently posted about ISIS activities. He also coordinated the activities of the ISIS module in the state. As the module's 'amir', he directed the youth to carry out terror operations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The group communicated using Telegram's encrypted messaging software or the Tutanota secure, encrypted e-mail.

The first warning of an imminent attack came on September 9 last year when police requested a Jamaat-e-Islami-organised peace and harmony conference to shift venue from the open Marine Drive public grounds in Kochi to a nearby school. Surveillance of the Omar Al Hindi cell had revealed a possible plot to drive a truck into the crowd. The inspiration, apparently, was the July 14, 2016, attack in France where an Islamist attacker drove a truck into a crowd watching Bastille Day celebrations in Nice, killing 87 people.

Moinudheen had wire transferred Rs 3.8 lakh to the ISIS cell in September 2016. The members purchased a Maruti van for an attack in Kodaikanal but it got involved in a road accident. The funds proved insufficient to buy a truck.

On October 2, the NIA and state police moved in as the five-member ISIS module met at the Kanakamala hilltop in Kannur. Those arrested included 30-year-old Manseed Mehmood alias Omar Al Hindi, Mangalassery's point man in India. Mehmood, a native of Kannur and an active PFI worker, had been working as a sales executive in Doha. He had come to Kannur for a holiday with his Filipino wife and had invited other cell members to chalk out strategies for terror attacks in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The cell members included Swalih Mohammed, 25, from Thrissur; Rashid Ali, 24, from Coimbatore; Safvan P, 30, from Malappuram; and Jasim N.K., 25, from Kozhikode. Another gang member, Ramshad NK, 24, was arrested later that evening.

A forensic analysis of the digital media devices recovered from the accused-mobile phones, tablet PCs and storage media-laid bare the deadly plot. The group was preparing to attack foreign nationals, especially Israelis, visiting the Vattakanal hill station near Kodaikanal. The group also had plans to attack rationalists and members of Muslim denominations like the Ahmadiya sect and the Jamaat-e-Islami.

On April 13 this year, security agencies heaved a sigh of relief. Ringleader Mangalassery was believed to have been killed in a laser-guided bomb attack by US aircraft in Asadkhel, Afghanistan. His death was conveyed by Ashfaq, a fellow emigre from Kerala in Afghanistan. The message was accompanied with photographs of Shajeer's funeral. He was among six other ISIS men to have been killed in recent US airstrikes, part of a dramatic downturn in ISIS's fortunes. After the fall of Mosul in Iraq in June, the group is believed to now control just 40 per cent of the territory it held in Iraq and Syria in 2015. The group is withering under an onslaught of ground and air assaults from US-led coalition forces in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan where its affiliate, the Islamic State of Khorasan Province, has attracted recruits from Kerala. This pressure, security analysts believe, will have a significant impact on ISIS's future attempts to recruit in India. "Defeat is a great delegitimiser and the Islamic State is now facing a comprehensive defeat in its heartland areas," says Ajai Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management.

Kingpin Shajeer Mangalassery

"A dramatic escalation of activities or attacks by 'remote controlled groups' is unlikely in India, and such risks will also diminish over time in Europe," Sahni says. Given the much smaller numbers that have gone from, and would potentially return to, India, there should be very limited risk of any major impact on the security situation here. Occasional incidents of significant magnitude and some limited mobilisation around such returnees, particularly the undocumented ones, remain a future possibility, he says.

Meanwhile, in the steel cupboards of the state intelligence headquarters in Pattom, Thiruvananthapuram, sits a top secret file with the names of 60 men and women. These men and women (names withheld because they haven't committed any crime, yet) lead a seemingly middle-class existence. Some have returned from the Gulf and are unemployed. Others are workers of Salafist groups or, like Mangalassery, radicals disillusioned with the PFI.

All of these individuals are on a watch list, their movements under constant surveillance. Any suspicious activity, even flying out of the country, could lead to their detention. The police believe these individuals are closet Islamists with deep online ties with ISIS and who, like the Omar Al Hindi module, could be motivated to carry out potential terror attacks.

They are being tracked by officers of 'Operation Pigeon', the state's most comprehensive attempt to profile radical groups or persons linked to ISIS. It was given the go-ahead in May 2017 by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, nearly seven months after the Omar Al Hindi module was uncovered. The intelligence wing then fanned out to collect data, tapped mobile phones of suspects, monitored social media and shadowed radicals, meticulously tabulating the data and creating profiles. Field officials were directed to identify each person in their locality and profile them giving all details.

The secretive operation analysed a wealth of intelligence extracted from wiretaps, interrogations, messages on Instagram, Telegram and other social media feeds of nearly 450 suspects. The state police also relied on intelligence shared by the NIA, the nodal agency for ISIS-related cases, the Intelligence Bureau and R&AW. The list of suspects was finally whittled down to 60 people. If anyone on this hotlist attempts to leave Kerala, a senior intelligence official reveals, they will be charged under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), waging war against the state-which carries a maximum sentence of life in jail.

The picture of Mangalassery ISIS posted after his death.

"The Islamic State module is a global threat without frontiers. Our operation, however, is limited to Kerala," says BS Mohammed Yasin, DGP intelligence (see interview: "Our operation is limited to Kerala"). The state police claim that Operation Pigeon has been a big success and point to a case where Malayali youths were identified discussing plans to travel to Turkey. Their IP addresses were tracked down and parents briefed about their ISIS links. The boys have since been dissuaded.

Yet the operation has also had failures. The police failed to track Najeeb, the MTech student from Malappuram (his last known location was Hyderabad) and are still investigating two other missing cases, from Palakkad and Malappuram.

A senior intelligence official calls the 60 potential recruits they have under surveillance "hardcore and highly motivated". "They don't care about the risks involved. For them, jihad is a path to heaven," says a senior intelligence official. Of course, there would be serious problems if the path to heaven involves creating mayhem in Kerala. The state has reason to fear a 26/11-style terrorist attack or even a Nice-style truck one. "The state is lucky not to have been tested by a terror attack," admits a senior intelligence official.

Even the task of keeping the 60 potentials under surveillance is stretching the already limited resources of field intelligence units. The state has just 35 intelligence officers as against a requirement of at least 100. The 133-man 'Thunderbolt' counter-terrorism force set up in 2012 is combing the northern districts of Wayanad and Malappuram in anti-Maoist operations. The state is yet to move on two proposals made in 2015 and 2016 to expand the Thunderbolts. A proposal made in March 2016 to tighten security in sensitive religious places where devotees and tourists flock in large numbers, like Guruvayur, Sabarimala and the Jewish synagogue in Mattancherry, Kochi, is also yet to be acted on. Complacency clearly is hobbling Kerala's war on terror.