A senior government pleader who represented the Kerala Government in the Hadiya case has approached the state police chief with claims that he is being targeted and abused on social media.

Advocate P Narayanan said he noticed defamatory messages and veiled threats against him on social media pages after he appeared in the case.

"The messages are extremely abusive and some of them threaten me," Narayanan told DH on Monday.

The government pleader, attached to the camp office of the Advocate General, had appeared on behalf of the state in the writ petition filed by Hadiya's father K M Ashokan at the Kerala High Court regarding her illegal detention.

He had argued that Hadiya was forced and misled to her religious conversion and later, her marriage.

Narayanan said the abusive messages were in retaliation to the High Court's order, in May this year, which annulled the marriage of Hadiya (Akhila Ashokan, before she converted to Islam) with a Muslim man, Shafin Jahan.

He said he was being targeted by people who were trying to project him as an RSS sympathiser who acted in the organisation's interests while appearing in the case.

"Distorted facts and innuendos are being spread through social media regarding my role as a State Law Officer in the conduct of the said case," he said in his complaint. Ernakulam central police have registered a case.