When Bindu Sampath played the video attached to a forwarded message she received on WhatsApp last month, her jaw dropped. The video—a teaser trailer for an upcoming movie, Kerala Files, by director Sudipto Sen—showed a burqa-clad woman calling herself Fatima, claiming to be an aspiring nurse from Kerala who was forcefully recruited into the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) insurgency.
The main character, albeit fictional, seemed to be based on Sampath’s own daughter,...