The convicts, all belonging to Popular Front of India, cut off T J Joseph’s hand in 2010 for allegedly insulting the Prophet. The convicts, all belonging to Popular Front of India, cut off T J Joseph’s hand in 2010 for allegedly insulting the Prophet.

The prime accused in the Kerala hand chopping case surrendered before the NIA court in Kochi on Friday. M K Nazer was absconding since 2010, after the attack on college professor T J Joseph.

Prof Joseph’s right hand was chopped off after he allegedly insulted Prophet Mohammed in a question paper.

The court on Friday sent Nazer to judicial custody. NIA sources said they will seek his custody for interrogation.

In May this year, the NIA trial court in Kochi sentenced 10 people to eight years of imprisonment and three others to two years of imprisonment. Nazer, who surrendered before the court on Friday, and the other convicts were activists of right-wing Muslim outfit Popular Front of India.

While four accused in the case are still at large, 18 people were acquitted for want of evidence.

Joseph taught Malayalam at Newman College in Thodupuzha. While preparing a question paper for an internal exam in 2010, Joseph had extracted a text from a literary work of writer P T Kunhimuhammed. The text was a conversation between a lunatic and God. Joseph named the lunatic Mohammed in the question paper.

Days after the exam, some people from the college handed over the question paper to Muslim outfits, which claimed Joseph had insulted the Prophet. Joseph went into hiding, but police allegedly tortured his son, then a college student. Days later, Joseph surrendered. Shortly after, the college management, Catholic Diocese of Kothamangalam, suspended him.

On July 5, Joseph and his family were returning home from a local church when PFI activists stopped his car. They pulled him out of the vehicle and chopped off his right palm.

Even as he was recovering, Joseph, the family’s lone breadwinner, was dismissed by the college.

The M G University, to which the college was affiliated, and the Left government in Kerala demanded the professor be reinstated, but the Catholic Church refused to do so.

Meanwhile, a magistrate court in Thodupuzha exonerated Joseph from the charges of insulting the Prophet, but he was still not reinstated.

His family had been subsisting on the meagre income of his daughter, then employed as a nurse in Delhi.

On March 20, 2014, his wife Salomi committed suicide due to the Catholic Church’s refusal to reinstate Joseph before his retirement so that he gets retirement benefits.

Following the outrage over her death, the Kothamangalam Catholic Diocese finally allowed Joseph to return to service on his last working day in March 2014.

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