Mumbai,nov.28 : One of the four Indian nationals from Kalyan near Mumbai, who was said to have joined ISIS in Iraq, has returned to India on Friday. The Mumbai Police is likely to file a case against him and place him under arrest. Arif Majeed was brought back from Turkey and is being interrogated by the National Investigation Agency.
On 26 November it was reported that Majeed, who until then was believed to have been killed while fighting for ISIS in Syria, wanted to come back home.
A Union Home Ministry source had told Hindustan Times that the four youth got in touch with their family members expressing a wish to be rescued. The father of one of the youth reportedly contacted National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials and sought their help in rescuing his son from Turkey.
Meanwhile a senior intelligence official had told the Times of India that the government was willing to take a sympathetic view on the matter, but he said that it was virtually impossible to negotiate the return of a person associated with a globally proscribed outfit. Recently, reports said, that the jihadist movement in Syria and Iraq reportedly attracted a lot of youngsters.
The HT report noted that the Indian security agencies identified about 10 Muslim youngsters who left lucrative jobs to fight and establish a pan-Islamic caliphate. Apart from four youngsters from Kalyan, near Mumbai, who are believed to be fighting alongside Islamic State of Syria and Levant (ISIS) terrorists, a Kerala youth studying in Dubai and a Hyderabad student from Texas have joined Islamist fighters in Syria.
Four youth, Fahad Sheikh, Arif Majeed, Shaheen Tanki and Aman Tandel had left for Iraq on 25 May claiming they were headed for a pilgrimage. The next day, Arif’s father discovered a note from his son saying he had left to join jihadists in Iraq. fahad, an engineer, had landed a job in Bandra two days before leaving. He told his family he was going to work and never returned, his family told the Indian Express, unable to fathom why their son took such an extreme step.
Where the radicalisation of Indian Muslim youth is concerned, a recent report by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) has said that more than 300 Indian youth have been recruited by Pakistan-based Tehreek-e-Taliban and this group has joined hands with ISIL in Iraq.
