al-Baghdadi, made a video appearance. He told his followers that the ‘Caliphate’ in Syria and Iraq had fallen but that the ‘battle’ was long. He urged his followers to continue hitting their enemy with all their might. In an audio message appended to his video, he claimed that the Sri Lanka Easter bombings (on April 21st, which killed over 250 people) were a revenge of the IS defeat in Baghouz, Syria a month earlier. It was his first appearance in five years. In 2014, Baghdadi had appeared in a video celebrating the birth of the Islamic State.

And, now, despite being the world’s most wanted man, why did he risk an appearance?

According to Joshua A Geltzer, former senior director for counterterrorism in the US National Security Council, Baghdadi wantedcause of the Islamic State.”

A SENIOR INTELLIGENCE OFFICER based in Kerala said that initially, two states, Maharashtra and Telangana, were put by agencies as IS hotspots. But in the last three years, active monitoring has kept activities in these states under check. Now it is Kerala and Tamil Nadu where IS activity is high. “The biggest headache for us is Kerala,” says the officer. With its connection with Gulf countries, a significant number of people from Kerala are getting extremely radicalised (about 10 per cent of Kerala’s people work in the Gulf). “The Salafi influence has increased a lot in Kerala, especially in the north districts, like Malappuram,” reveals an NIA officer based in Cochin. Since 2017, Qatar, with its active support of the Muslim Brotherhood (as competition