Anupama Mili By

KOZHIKODE:After being abused for her Facebook post on sexual abuse in madrasas in Kerala, V P Rajeena, an online journalist with a regional daily here, has decided to take on the challenge and vows to reveal more activities in the schools through social media. Her account was shut down by Facebook after complaints from users, but was reactivated on Friday.

On November 22, Rajeena—who is from an orthodox middle-class Muslim family in Malabar—posted on her Facebook page that “there was sexual abuse happening in madrasas by teachers in Kerala. Both female and male students are subjected to sexual atrocities by male teachers”. Recounting her childhood days in a madrasa, she wrote that in her class, an ustaad (teacher) touched boys inappropriately. “First day of first class, the ustaad called boys and unzipped them, feeling them up at the wrong places,” she wrote. When the boys tried to avoid the touching, the teacher told them he was “checking the size”. “As I moved to Class IV, an ustaad used to grope girls and poke them with a stick during the power cut time at night. A girl even burst out in anger once and threatened to report him,” her post said in Malayalam. After her posts, users started flooding abuses on her page and threatened her with dire consequences.

“I am not part of Jamaat-e-Islami, though I work for a newspaper that follows that ideology. You cannot put me under a particular ideology. I have specified in my post that the madrasa referred to was E K Samastha Sunni madrasa. The divide among Sunni groups is so deep a less clear post could have led to further division among the public,” she told The Sunday Standard.