The information provided by Yasmin, 29, has deepened counter-terror agencies’ worries as it confirms the growing perception that Daesh has overtaken Pakistani outfits as the biggest threat to national security.
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All of them had exited India from Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Mumbai airports for Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat or Abu Dhabi from where they are learnt to have travelled to Afghanistan through Iran, said sources.
Yasmin Zaid, the radicalised schoolteacher from Kerala who was arrested at Delhi airport last month before she could board a flight to Kabul in her attempt to join the Daesh, has told the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that at least 22 people from Kerala had left India between May and July this year to join the terror outfit.
One of the missing persons – Dr Ijas, who left with his wife Refaela – told his family on Monday about the birth of the baby girl. She was also accompanied by a son from her first marriage.
Investigators are probing linkages between the Kozikode-run Peace International School and Naik’s NGO, the Islamic Research Foundation, that has come under the scrutiny after many arrested youths claimed that they were inspired by Naik’s speeches. Rashid told Yasmin in the first week of July that he and the other missing people from Kerala had reached the Caliphate in Afghanistan, sources said. Yasmin was teaching in International Peace School in Kasargode along where she met her to be husband Abdul Rashid Abdullah, the leader of the Kerala ISIS pack, who was reportedly working in office staff at the school.
22 missing persons comprising of 13 men, 6 women and 3 children had left their houses in Kasargod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and first week of July.
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Yasmin also revealed that she had married Rashid, 30, on May 3 in a nikah ceremony solemnised over the phone in which another co-accused Shihas acted as “wali” (guardian) of the bride, while another co-accused Ashfaque and Yahya acted as witnesses. According to sources, Yasmin disclosed that Abdul Rashid and his first wife Ayisha were in touch with a United Kingdom couple who were themselves converts to Islam and were spreading messages in support of IS and the caliphate over Telegram channel to which she had also subscribed. “This is a kind of recruiting channel and the United Kingdom couple appear to be recruiting on behalf of IS”. Yasmin has said she used the money to make preparations to travel to Afghanistan. Yasmin’s phone, SD Card and SIM card has now been sent to FSL lab in Trivandrum.
