On 25 March, a group of Islamic State (IS) bombers attacked a Gurudwara — Har Rai Sahib — in Kabul killing 25 Sikhs.

The IS has claimed that one of the terrorists responsible for the blast was ‘Abu Khalid Al-Hindi. IS magazine Al Naba on 26 March published Al-Hindi’s photograph with a Type 56 assault rifle and making the typical Tawhid one-finger salute.

On 27 March (Friday), India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) said the Al-Hindi was Muhammad Muhsin, an engineering student from Thrikkarippur in Kerala’s Kasargod district.

Intelligence sources told media on Friday that Muhsin was reported to have been killed in a drone attack in Afghanistan’s Khorasan province on 18 July last year. Then, he was identified to have hailed from Edappal in Malappuram district.

Muhsin was studying engineering in Thrissur when he went missing in 2017. He had told his family that he was going to Bengaluru. He was 21 years old then.

The police, who filed a missing person complaint then, found out that he had boarded a flight to Dubai. The Intelligence Bureau (IB), which investigated his missing, told his family that he had joined IS.

It transpires that Muhsin had reached Khorasan from Dubai, one of the three routes those who had left Kerala to join IS had taken. He had undergone arms training before going to Afghanistan.

He is reported to have run the Telgram group floated by Shajeer Manglassery, one of seven persons chargesheeted by the NIA in October 2016 for conspiring to target certain cities in South India, besides some prominent persons.

Manglassery was reportedly killed in a drone attack in June last year.

NIA said no case had been registered against Muhsin so far.

Some in the media have also tended to confuse Muhsin with Mohammed Sajid Kuthirummal, a resident of Padanna in Kerala’s district. Kuthirummal has been chargesheeted by NIA as among those who had left Kerala to join IS.

A local from Padanna told Swarajya that it was Muhsin who was seen in the photo of the IS magazine and not Kuthirummal. A school dropout, the 27-year-old Kuthirummal ran a shop in Padanna before he decided to leave for Afghanistan to join IS in March 2015.

While Kuthirummal, if alive, could be 30 years old now, Muhsin would be 24 years old.