NEW DELHI: For years during Kashmir insurgency, commentators and politicians would never miss a chance to claim that no Indian from outside the Valley was fighting there despite two decades of insurgency that claimed to be a jihad. In fact, it was always pointed out that Indian Muslim community was insulated from the global churnings.

That is no more the case, as Indian security establishment has gathered evidence in recent times of Indian youths travelling to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq to take part in jihad.According to various inputs, almost 20 youths from India are probably in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan fighting with Islamic insurgents, or at least providing assistance to them.Kalyan resident and engineering student Arif Fayyaz Majeed and Thane residents - Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, Aman Naim Tandel and Shaheen Farooqi Tanki - are now believed to be in Iraq, probably fighting for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Parents of all four youths have filed missing person complaint with the local police.According to sources here, there are also indications emerging from Pune that possibly a couple of youths from the city may also have gone to Iraq.First indications of Indian youths joining jihad in Iraq and Syria came from South. In Chennai, a couple of youths reportedly went via Singapore to Iraq. Their movement, and some links, prompted agencies to suspect that they were probably indoctrinated, or at least using links to Shia extremist forces to find their way into Iraq. “It is still not clear if they have gone there to fight, or if they are seeking a better future,” one official said.Another official said they have reasonable evidence to suspect that youths from Tami Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Jharkhand could be in Iraq and Syria. “Not all of them could be fighting, but some of them are definitely motivated by the ideology,” he said.In fact, this is not the first time inputs have emerged of Indian youths going out to fight jehad in foreign land. Starting June last year, there was a stream of inputs about a group of youths from Karnataka going to Afghanistan to join Taliban, or al-Qaeda. “There was no clarity, we still don’t know what happened to them or how many were in the group,” one official said.Another official cautioned that in some of these cases, the youths are going mostly for monetary reasons. Given the pathetic security situation in these places, need for workers is high, and their rewards would also be better. “In a perverse way, there is no better place than a civil war area to make quick buck,” he said.