india

Updated: Dec 13, 2018 16:24 IST

After the mysterious disappearance of 21 people from north Kerala two years ago, ten more residents are suspected to have fled the country to join the militant group Islamic State, police said on Thursday.

Police suspect the ten, including two women and four children, slipped out through the United Arab Emirates and believed to have reached IS-held areas of Afghanistan.

They have been identified as K Sajjid, his wife Shaheena and two children. Similarly, K Anwar, his wife Afseela, two children and two of their family friends were also missing. All of them belong to north Kerala’s Kannur district.

Kannur’s deputy superintendent of police PP Sadanandan, who is investigating some of the previous cases, said relatives have informed them about the latest case of missing people. He said police have information that at least 100 men from the state may have slipped out through various countries.

“We have information about three modules - Padanna and Thrikkariour, Valpatanan and Munderi - and the last based in Bahrain being controlled by some youth belonging to Kozhikode and Malappuram districts,” he said adding there was no point in keeping these disappearances secret.

“If we make them public, parents and religious authorities will take extra care,” Sadanandan said.

Relatives told police they left their homes on November 20 on the pretext of going to neighbouring Mysuru and took a flight to Dubai from Bengaluru and they have no information after this.

“Before leaving Dubai they called some of the relatives to say that they were bound to the holy land and they will not come back. They invited other family members also to join them,” said a relative of the missing.

One of them was a close relative of PV Shameer, reportedly killed in Syria while fighting for the IS. Shameer, his wife and three children joined the IS at the height of the Syrian war in 2015. In 2017, his relatives back home got information that the whole family had died in a drone attack.

Among the 21 who slipped out of the country in 2016, relatives have information about six deaths. Relatives and intelligence agencies say most of the missing might have settled in tribal-dominated Nangarhar province of eastern Afghanistan.

The deportation of five from Turkey last year reaffirmed Kerala police’s fear that many people working in west Asian countries might have joined IS and gone to fight in the war-ravaged region. Their concerns compounded as there was no mechanism to check their travels plans abroad. Intelligence officials also feel they are sitting ducks. At least 18 lakh people from the state work in various Gulf countries.

During interrogation Islamic State-returned terror operative Subhani Haja Moideen, a native of Thodupuzha, had told the National Investigation Agency that he came across more than 100 Indian fighters during his brief stay in Iraq and Syria in 2015.

As he quietly returned to his native place a year later, he told his relatives he was on a religious trip to Turkey.

He was arrested a year later when NIA was investigating the Kanakamala IS module case, which was busted on October 2, 2016, when the agency’s sleuths raided a hideout and arrested six men planning to target prominent people including judges, RSS and BJP leaders, a synagogue in Kochi and Islamic reformers.

During the interrogation, Moideen, lodged in Viyyur’s central jail, had told NIA he had interacted with some ultras who masterminded the 2015 Paris attack like Abdel Hamid Abaaoud during his stay in Syria and Iraq.

Last week, an investigation team from France came to Kochi to question him after NIA alerted them.