With incidents rising, intel agencies want law to deal with Indians trying to join Islamic State

Nine Indians who wanted to join Islamic State (IS), have been released in Bengaluru after they were deported from Turkey while trying to join the terror organisation by entering Syria. All had entered Turkey on a tourist visa and were caught at the Syria-Turkey border. According to a Times of India report, the nine Indians included “Ibrahim Nowfal (24) from Hassan in Karnataka, Javeed Baba (24) from Khammam district in Telangana, and Chennai resident Muhammed Abdul Ahad (46), his wife and their five children”. Ahad has worked in the US “for more than 10 years” and “two of his children are US citizens,” adds the report. [caption id=“attachment_1834233” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The report adds that they were “interrogated for over 30 hours” by Andhra police, Bengaluru police and intelligence agencies and have promised not to indulge in any terror-related activity. The report of these nine being released comes soon after a Hyderabad teen girl, who was living in Qatar, tried to join the terrorist organisation but then gave up mid-way. And with more and more incidents like this taking place, security agencies want a legal framework with which to deal with individuals trying to leave the country to join the terrorist group.  As many as 15 Indians having been stopped or apprehended while attempting to cross over to Syria to join Islamic State in the past few months. According to a Times of India report, the Indian intelligence is wants “the government to arrive at a policy and frame a law to deal with those going abroad to join the ranks of the Islamic State.” India doesn’t have a law per se to try any of these individuals, unless it can be proven that they engaged in terrorist activities against India. For instance in the case of Mehdi Biswas, we had noted here that the police was worried that any of the charges pinned against him were unlikely to hold in court. Biswas was charged under “Section 125 IPC which deals with the ‘crime of waging war against any Asiatic power in alliance with government of India”, but since he never left India, the police would have to prove that the content of his tweets and direct messages on Twitter were enough to amount to as waging war against India, something that would be hard to prove in court. In fact the police even slapped sections 354 of IPC on Biswas, which deals with outraging the modesty of women. He had tweeted in favour of Kurdish women soldiers being raped by Islamic State. Again it will be hard to prove that his actions amounted to molestation in court. Where Kalyan resident Arib Majeed is concerned, the police case against him “is based on United Nations proscribing the outfit,” says the Times of India report. One officer told the paper that a framework was needed to deal with those who are trying to join the ISIS. “How are we going to deal with a mason who has gone to Islamic State to work on a dam for a hefty salary? Are we going to treat him as a terrorist? ISIS is now a state which can hire people for non-combat roles. Or a woman who has gone to be someone’s wife, as it is happening in Europe,” he said. While 15 Indians joining Islamic State is not sufficient proof that Muslims in India are keen to join the organisation, the increasing radicalisation via Internet is a worrying factor. As Firstpost’s Debobrat Ghose had reported here , the case of educated Muslims trying to join the organisation was a new trend. Alok Bansal, director at Centre for Security and Strategy, had told Firstpost, “Primarily, these youth are led to believe on the basis of theological justification, unlike as it’s believed that it’s injustice, poverty or an aggrieved person joins fundamentalist outfits. Many a times, parents are ignorant about the background of a maulavi who comes to teach Arabic, Urdu etc to their children, who imparts parochial lessons.” The other factor is of course online indoctrination. The cases of Majeed and Mehdi have proved that both got indoctrinated online on jihadi websites. While security agencies want a policy to deal with Islamic State-fascinated youth, it should be remembered that those who’ve been indoctrinated can be counselled (which has been done in many cases) which can prove effective in most cases.