New Delhi, Aug. 3 (The Telegraph): Six young men from India who had joined the Islamic State are reported to have been killed in the Iraq-Syria war zone fighting for the terror outfit, sources in the Union home ministry claimed today.
A senior official at North Block said 13 youths from India, or of Indian origin, had joined the IS over the past one and a half years, according to "information available with our security agencies".
"Six of them died fighting while the remaining seven are still working for the jihadi group," the official said, quoting from a confidential report prepared by the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.
But only one of the seven was in active combat, he added. "The rest are doing menial jobs."
The issue of radicalised Indian youths figured prominently at a meeting of security experts today, barely two days after the home ministry's advisory to police chiefs and home secretaries of 12 sensitive states to treat youths radicalised by the IS with extreme sensitivity.
The shift in strategy had first been witnessed when, scanning Internet chat rooms and the social media in August last year, Hyderabad's cyber police detected 23educated Telangana youths poised to join the IS.
Telangana police detained sixof them who had travelled to Calcutta to slip into Bangladesh on their way to West Asia but arrested none among the 23 because "they had not committed any crime".
They were, instead, counselled and allowed to resume their normal lives under surveillance, which is still on.
Among those who joined the IS, Arif Majeed, 22, was the first, before the young man from Maharashtra was rescued by Indian authorities in Turkey last November. Arif and three of his friends - Fahad Sheikh, Aman Tabdel and Shaheem Tanki, all in their early twenties - had left for Iraq without informing their families.
Security agencies claim to have identified those still working for the IS and also those who went down fighting.
An IB official said two among those killed were from Kalyan in Maharashtra, while one was from Hyderabad. The remaining three were from the Indian Mujahideen and had left Pakistan, where they were based, to join the IS.
Of the seven Indian-origin youths still working for the terror outfit, one each is from Jammu and Kashmir, Bangalore and Telangana and two are from Kalyan. "Besides, there were two Indian youths living in Singapore and Australia who joined the IS," said another official.
But only one of the seven is allowed to join active combat. "The rest are deployed mostly to assist the fighters and serve as cooks, helpers and drivers," the official added.
The report has also dealt with the IS threat in India. A senior home ministry official said though the outfit had no "major pull" in India and these cases of youths joining the IS were only "stray incidents", there were "40 to 50 radicalised jihadis" who have been trying to recruit youths.
"They are on recruitment drives in Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Uttar Pradesh. A dossier on such people has been handed over to the respective state police chiefs," he said.
Sources in the home ministry said top officials of the 12 states had been asked to monitor social networking sites.
"We are taking several counter-measures, including counselling of youths and monitoring social media. A police team from each of the 12 states will be trained on how to keep an eye on such youths though social media," the home ministry official said.
"Timely intervention is what made it easier," he said, referring to last August's breakthrough by Hyderabad's cyber cops.
