25 Indian IS sympathisers may sneak into India from Afghanistan: Intel reports

By Rajnish Singh
New Delhi [India], September 10 : A group of 25 Indians having allegiance with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) who are supposed to be a big threat to India, may enter into Indian territory from Afghanistan as they broke open various jails when Taliban took over the country last month, the intelligence inputs are suggesting.
These 25 Indians are on the wanted list of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for having alleged links with the terror group ISIS.
However, the NIA officials, privy to the ongoing investigation in ISIS cases, said that they were not aware of the present status of these 25 Indians but investigations have established that all of them migrated (hijarat) to Afghanistan and joined ISIS in the Nangarhar province.
Considering 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 are belong to the IS-inspired module in Kerala and they fled to Afghanistan on different periods sometime between 2016 and 2018 to join ISIS. The NIA got inputs about these ISIS sympathisers during its probe into several IS-inspired modules active in Delhi, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
A senior NIA official told ANI that 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 from foreign agencies.
A red corner notice (RCN), issued on the request of NIA, already exists against all the 25 suspects that include Abdulla Abdul Rashid, Dr Ijas Kallukettiya Purayil, who is said to have motivated around two dozen Indian men and women to join ISIS, Nimisha.
As per intelligence reports, an official said that 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 in the reign of the Ashraf Ghani government.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has been provided with the intelligence input recently those women fighters who migrated to Afghanistan to join ISIS but surrendered later before the Ashraf Ghani government, have been freed after the Taliban's took over Kabul. They were among the thousands of ISIS fighters freed after the jailbreak in Afghanistan, said another official.
"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," the 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 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 Afghan-Pakistan borders.
Munsib is learnt to be active on social media and is believed to be involved in online recruitment. Officials said that Munsib is active at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.