Kochi: Poet K. Satchidandan has called for the boycott of an English daily for running a comic strip named Agent Rana for what he described as “tarnishing the image of Kochi”. In a Facebook post, Sachidanandan, who is a former secretary of Kendra Sahitya Academy, he called upon every Keralite to “boycott” the newspaper “for tarnishing the image of Kochi which is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in India.
“What a disgrace that a so called national newspaper should be doing this shameless (and probably paid) Islamophobic propaganda in the name of a comic,” the post said. Media critic and writer BRP Bhaskar and several others shared the post. Satchidandan was upset with narrative of the comic where Ismail X, an agent of Islamic State in Kochi has been recruiting people to go to Syria in a secret location near Raqqa to be trained as bomb-makers and return to India to unleash a wave of terror.
