Nicknamed ‘topchi’ because she wanted to fire canons for IS, the girl is being counselled by cops.The state Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), which last week identified a 17-year-old convent-educated girl from Pune as “highly radicalised” by Daesh (the ISIS, which hates being called Daesh), may have a bigger problem on its hand.The girl, who was detained on December 18, and is now being deradicalised with the help of a maulvi, told the ATS that she was in regular touch with around 200 young men and women, who were itching to escape to Syria and fight on behalf of Daesh. The girl lives on the outskirts of Pune and comes from a wealthy family. She was promised that she could work with Daesh and study medicine in Syria if she was ready to “help her religion”.The cops said that the girl started spending hours on the internet reading about Daesh, and soon joined a few online forums discussing religion.Calling herself ‘Radical Gun’ online, she came in contact with 30-year-old Mohammad Sirajuddin from Jaipur, who worked in the Indian Oil Corporation’s marketing department.Sirajuddin, who the Rajasthan ATS arrested on December 10 for attempting to recruit Indians for Daesh, had been in touch with the Pune girl for a few months, and, according to the cops, “had completely convinced her that the terror outfit’s ideology was the only way to save Islam”. Sirajuddin’s interrogation led the police to the Pune girl.The girl, who the ATS officers call ‘topchi’ after she told them that it was her dream to fire cannons for Daesh, promised Sirajuddin that she would do everything possible to recruit as many people as possible for Daesh, a senior ATS officer said. “The girl joined several chat forums and also created chat rooms to discuss religion. We have found a list of around 200 people, who were in regular touch with her on the internet, and who appear highly radicalised. All of them used fake names in the online chatrooms, and it is difficult to trace them as they keep shifting between several proxy chatrooms,” an ATS officer said.The ATS is worried over the fact that Sirajuddin was able to radicalise the girl easily, and hundreds more may have been radicalised in a similar manner. “He would email her video footages of people being killed in Palestine and other parts of the world which has a majority Muslim population. In a matter of weeks, her personality underwent a complete change,” an officer said.“Her parents told us that she stopped wearing jeans and t-shirts and replaced them with burqa. She also frequently fought with her family over the ‘correct’ way to follow religion,” the officer said, adding that her classmates were also surprised at her behaviour.ACP Bhanupratap Barge, in-charge of the Pune unit of the ATS, said, “There are reports that the girl was in touch with a few men who are missing from Mumbai. That is not true. What we know is, she was in touch with a large group of people, and we are trying to identify them.”