A group of 25 Indians having allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) may enter Indian territory from Afghanistan via Pakistan. All of them were incarcerated in various prisons in Afghanistan, until the time they were released by the Taliban last month, intelligence agencies say. These 25 Indians are on the wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for having alleged links with the terror group ISIS. NIA officials, privy to the ongoing investigation in ISIS cases, said that they were not aware of the present status of the 25 Indians but investigations have established that all of them migrated (hijarat) to Afghanistan and joined the ISIS in the Nangarhar province.
Considering the inputs, an alert has already been issued at all Indian airports and seaports, manned by the Bureau of Immigration (BoI), to ensure that these ISIS suspects could not sneak into India from Afghanistan.
Most of these 25 belong to Kerala’s ISIS-inspired module. They fled to Afghanistan sometime between 2016 and 2018 to join ISIS. The NIA got inputs about these ISIS sympathisers during its probe into several ISIS-inspired modules active in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
According to a senior NIA official, some of these 25 ISIS sympathisers are believed to have died as per the testimony of their family members here in India but the agency has not yet received any confirmation about this from foreign agencies.
A red corner notice (RCN), issued on the request of NIA, already exists against all the 25, including Abdulla Abdul Rashid and Dr Ijas Kallukettiya Purayil, who is said to have motivated around two dozen Indian men and women to join ISIS.
An official said that as per intelligence reports, some of the 25 ISIS supporters were killed in 2019 in a drone attack, and others surrendered to Afghan forces and were imprisoned in Kabul during President Ashraf Ghani’s government.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been provided with the intelligence input recently of those women fighters who migrated to Afghanistan to join ISIS but surrendered later before the Ashraf Ghani government. They were freed after the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
“As per latest inputs, 25 ISIS sympathisers are living in Afghanistan. They are wanted in our cases. However, some of them may have died. We are still not sure about their current whereabouts. Security agencies are monitoring the situation” an official said.
A physician from Kasargod, Purayil was suspected to be involved in the Jalalabad prison attack in August 2020.
Another suspect who travelled with Abdulla and Ijas and later was identified as Muhammed Muhsin, was said to be part of the gurudwara attack in Kabul in March last year.
NIA officials have claimed to have identified some of the ISIS sympathisers who were found active on social media and are believed to be operating from the Afghan-Pakistan border. As this newspaper had reported earlier, a person called Munsib is active on social media and is believed to be involved in online recruitment.