20 Kerala youths go missing, cops probe into possible links to Islamic State

The Kerala police have launched a high-level investigation into reports suggesting that 20 youths from Kasaragod and Palakkad districts, who were found missing for more than a month, may have joined Islamic State. The reports were based on complaints made by parents of some these youths with Kasaragod MP, PK Karunakaran, who took up the matter with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. Terming it very serious, Pinarayi directed the police to conduct a thorough probe into the matter. The parents approached the MP after they received a series of messages from their children indicating that they had reached the Islamic State camp. The youths, all in their mid-twenties, are well-educated and come from well-to-do families. A few of them were converts from Christianity to Islam. According to Kasaragod superintendent of police, A Srinivas, out of the 16 missing people, 12 are from Padanna and four from Thrikkarippur. The rest are from Palakkad. The missing youths included four couples, three bachelors and two kids. Among them were a doctor couple, an engineer and manager of an “international” school where wealthy non-resident Indians send their children. Four of the youths have left with their wives and two had their children with them. [caption id=“attachment_2884718” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The youths from Kasaragod hailed from two nearby villages-Padanna and Thrikkaripur. They left home on 6 June as part of a local Salafi group. The parents started receiving the messages from the youths last week. They conveyed identical message with jihadi flavours leading to suspicion that they have joined the Islamic State ranks. A message received by the parents of one of the youths said that he had left Dar-al-Jahannam (hell) for Dar-al-Jannah (paradise) and he was in a war zone. The parents of two other youths received WhatsApp messages saying that they had reached a place where there was divine rule and they are not going to return. The message urged the family members to join them. Another message said that they had joined Islamic State to fight the US for attacking Muslims. “The families of two missing youths have lodged a formal complaint with the police on Sunday. They have registered cases on the basis of these complaints and have begun investigation,” A Srinivas told Firstpost. “I am hoping that the others will follow suit in the coming days.” The family members suspect that the youths would be either in Syria or Afghanistan, as some of the messages originated from there. However, Director General of Police Lokanath Behera said the police could not confirm it yet. He said the police could not reach a conclusion about their Islamic State links unless they confirmed as to who had sent the message and the exact location from which it was sent. However, the state intelligence agency has started digging into the past of the youths to find out whether they had previously left their homes following some kind of radicalisation. Special branch personnel at Kasaragod and Palakkad summoned the family members of the missing youths on Saturday and gathered information about the youths to find out if they had any inclination to join the Islamic State. Intelligence officials are confused as the messages received by the parents have been identical except for the names. This they feel could be the result of some mischief. A senior intelligence official told Firstpost that they need an in-depth investigation to find out the truth. The officer, who did not want to be named, said that the statements given by the relatives of some of the missing youths were also contradictory. However, sources in the special branch said that it was a fact that the youths had gone missing. The source does not rule out the possibility of the youths receiving indoctrination. The father of a youth had said that his son used to regularly go to Tirur, a remote town in Malappuram district, saying he was engaged in a group farming activity there. The source suspects that the youths may have been indoctrinated there. The special branch investigation also revealed that the youths knew and were in regular touch with each other. Though they were not associated with any political or religious group before, they turned orthodox and started sporting long beards after visiting Tirur. Almost all the youths had left their homes at the beginning of the fasting month of Ramadan. Some of the youths said they were going to Middle East for religious studies while few others said they were going to Sri Lanka to attend a religious meeting. Reports said one couple told their parents that they were going to Mumbai to launch a business while a doctor, who left with his wife and two-year-old child, told relatives that they were leaving for Lakshadweep to take up a new job. The relatives came to know that all of them went to the same destination after they shared the messages at a meeting earlier this week. Most of them were shocked when they learnt that their children had joined the Islamic State fighters. Hakim, father of Hafesuddin who is among those missing from Kasaragod, told the television channels that his son had left a month ago and there was no news from him. “If he returns as a good man, I will welcome him. If not, I do not want to even see his dead body,” he said. Some parents blamed the police and intelligence for their failure to prevent the youths from leaving the state. Relative of a youth, on condition of anonymity, said that the group could not have made it to the Islamic State territory without sustained indoctrination. He believes that the police and the intelligence men could have tracked them if they acted on the warnings from various agencies. Presence of Indian Mujahideen and SIMI in Kerala The NIA, which investigated several terror cases in the state, had described Kerala highly volatile with the huge presence of Indian Mujahideen and the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). The agency found that they have been operating in the state under micro modules. Though there have been no major incidents of blasts in the state, Kerala came to be known as a hub for training terror operatives after four persons from the state were killed in encounter on the Indo-Pak border in Kashmir in 2007. These youths were found trained in Kerala. Subsequent investigations revealed that some terrorist outfits have been regularly training and recruiting unemployed youths from the state. The police found that two camps organised by the SIMI at Vagamon and Binamipuram in 2006 were for recruiting youths into terrorist outfits. The investigators have found that the extremist groups were recruiting unemployed youths with the offer of job and pushing them to extremist route. Police sources believe that at least 70 youths from the state had thus joined terror outfits and were involved in blasts in several parts of the country, including Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Jaipur. There have been two major suspected cases of Keralites joining the Islamic State camp. One is a journalist from Palakkad, who joined the Islamic State fighters in Syria after working for some time in Qatar. Another is a youth from Kozhikode, who had suspected to have joined Islamic State and crossed over to Syria from Ras-Al-Khaimah in the UAE. The youth named Riyabul Rehman had also tried to recruit youths from the state. The Malappuram police have registered a case against him in this connection. This is the first police case related to Islamic State in the state. The case was registered on the basis of intelligence report. The youth belonging to a Sunni family was radicalised by a Salafi group in the UAE. Riyabul, who was slowly drawn to the Islamic State, tried to attract others by forming a group in 2014. He had enrolled many Keralites working in the UAE into the group. Many of them were deported by the UAE government last year. Saudi Arabia had also deported some Keralites in this way. However, the state police who questioned the youths found that they had no inclination towards Islamic State ideology and let them off. Radicalisation of youth in Kerala The radicalisation in Kerala is taking place mostly through social media. A youth in Kasaragod had complained a bid by supporters of Islamic State to lure youths to join the terror through messages through Whatsapp. The youth said that he was flooded with propaganda materials after he was included in a group supporting the Islamic State. The state cyber police are investigating the complaint. The rise of terrorism in Kerala has come as a surprise to many since the Muslims, who account for about 26 percent of the population in the state, are not alienated as their brethren in other states. Moreover, they have been active in mainstream politics like any other party since Independence. Social commentator Professor MN Karaserry attributes large scale migration to Gulf countries and the resultant erosion in values to the growth of extremism in Kerala. He believes that the emergence of disruptive forces in the state is the result of steady commercialisation of religion and politics in the state powered by petro dollar.