'Malayali Taliban'; controversy erupts over Shashi Tharoor's tweet

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A controversy erupted on Tuesday after Congress MP Shashi Tharoor shared a video on Twitter in which two Taliban terrorists appeared to be speaking Malayalam. Tharoor stated that the video indicated the presence of Keralites among Taliban militants.

"It sounds as if there are at least two Malayali Taliban here — one who says “samsarikkette” around the 8-second mark & another who understands him!," Tharoor wrote on Twitter.

However, Rameez, the journalist who first tweeted the footage, clarified that it was not Malayalam. Rameez added that there were no people from Kerala in the Taliban and that they spoke a Dravidian language called 'Brahui'. He said the language was spoken by people from the Baloch region and was similar to Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam. Following this, Tharoor said the explanation could be left to linguists for clarity.