Indians lured by Islamic State now want to return home
According to recent intelligence reports, there are 15 Indians who are still part of ISIS, but killings of six fellow Indians and ill treatment meted out to them by the ISIS top brass - mainly comprising Arabs - has left them dejected.
Young Indians lured by the idea of jihad and dreaming to be part of a global Caliphate travelled all the way to Syria to serve the ISIS, but they are now disillusioned and want to return home from the war-fronts.
Also read: Sacrificial goats: ISIS treats its Indian recruits like slaves
According to recent intelligence reports, there are 15 Indians who are still part of ISIS, but killings of six fellow Indians and ill treatment meted out to them by the ISIS top brass - mainly comprising Arabs - has left them dejected. MAIL TODAY has accessed a report with details of 15 Indians who are still part of ISIS and are living miserable lives, many of them doing menial jobs, subjected to discrimination and seen with suspicion by the hierarchy. Intelligence inputs received indicate that most of them are unhappy and want to return home.
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Indians listed as still serving ISIS and a majority of them desperate to come back include; Adil Fayaz Wada (Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir), Talmeezur Rehman (Guntur, Andhra Pradesh), Abdul Qudus Turki (Bijapur, Karnataka), Atif Ahmed Khan Mohammed (Hyderabad, Telangana), Mohammed Rishal Kandatharavintakath (Kannur, Kerala), Huda Raheem (Kozhikode, Kerala), Muhammed Thayyib Shaikh Meeran (Vellore, Tamil Nadu) and Riyazur Rehman.
Other than these, the report names two men from Kalyan, Maharashtra, Fawad Tanweer Shaikh and Aman Nayeem Tandel who are part of the first batch of four from India to have joined ISIS. Of the four, Areeb Majeed managed to come back and is currently in custody and Shaheem Farooque Tanki is dead. Other than Majeed, 18-year-old girl Zeba Farheen from Hyderabad has been living in Qatar with her family and had managed to return after travelling to Syria.
Also read: Also read: ISIS looks down on Indian fighters, uses them as cannon fodder
Till date 23, Indians have been identified as ISIS recruits.
Sources said families of some of them have approached the local police that their boys want to come back. "The local police tipped off central intelligence agencies about them. Inputs from agencies neighbouring Iraq and Syria also suggest that Indians part of ISIS are tormented and want to escape from there," said an official tracking Indian ISIS recruits.
Major blow
With youth mostly from Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu joining the jihadi group, several others from these states were inspired and wanted to be part of the war to form a Caliphate.
The killings of Indians who were part of ISIS and deportation of nearly 35 Indians who wanted to be part of ISIS from UAE and Turkey recently along with the detention of Adnan Damudi Bhatkal in UAE, an Indian ISIS recruiter from Karnataka has been a major blow for Indians associated with the Sunni terror group. Sources said a team of intelligence officials recently visited UAE to interrogate Bhatkal who had recruited four Hyderabad-based youth who were intercepted in Kolkata before leaving from Bangladesh from where they had planned to fly out to Turkey. Bhatkal worked closely with Karnataka-based Mohammed Umar Subhan also known as Sultan Armar who died fighting for ISIS. He had put the Hyderabad youth in touch with Armar and the two indoctrinated them on the cyber space and also provided funds to get to Turkey from where they would be taken to Syria.
Indians who joined ISIS are used as foot soldiers ready to be sacrificed and always viewed with distrust by the hierarchy comprising mostly Arabs. In a report submitted to the union home ministry by central intelligence agencies it is stated that people from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are considered inferior and the practice of Islam in these countries thought to be apostate. South Asians are also more likely to be killed in battle since they are used as foot soldiers and the Arabs are preferred as officer cadre getting better salaries and accommodation, the report says.
The report attributes the high casualty among Indians and South Asians as they are tricked into suicide attacks. The intelligence report also suggests that there is a disproportionately high level of casualty among the South Asian and African foreign terrorist fighters.
More experience
"The Arab fighters with better battle experience are mostly positioned behind these fighters and hence their casualties are proportionally less in terms of their total numbers. This explains why so many Indians from a small Indian contingent have died," it says.