ISIS had a module of 9 in India, 8 of them from Tamil Nadu

Months after the Home Minister claimed ISIS was not a threat in India, NIA has found that 9 people joined ISIS in 2016.

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Nine Indians joined the ISIS in 2016 - eight from Tamil Nadu and one from Telangana. This is what the NIA learnt from the central security agencies that interrogated three people who were deported from Abu Dhabi for recruiting Indian youngsters for ISIS, according to T Jayendra Chaithanya’s report in The New Indian Express.

NIA has filed a fresh case on January 26, 2017 after learnt about the module of 9, the report says.

This revelation comes only months after Union Minister Rajnath Singh claimed that radicalisation by ISIS, was not a threat in India. Despite the Home Minister's assurances however, 11 out of 22 people missing in Kerala in 2016 are believed to have joined the ISIS and even reached terror camps in Syria. In addition to this, 5 youth from Hyderabad had been arrested in June last year for allegedly joining the ISIS.

According to the TNIE report, the NIA's FIR which was regisitered on Republic day, both in the capital and in Chennai, says that the agency took custody of the three men who were working in Abu Dhabi on behalf of ISIS. Sheikh Azhar Al Islam Abdul Sattar Sheikh, Mohammed Farhan Maohammed Rafiq Shaikh and Adnan Hussain Mohammed Hussain were working to 'identify, motivate, radicalise, recruit and train Indian citizena located both in India and other countries for planning and executing terrorist attacks in India and other friendly countries'

The agency's probe has reportedly revealed that a module of nine persons, all below the age of 30, had managed to join IS in Syria. The group left India for Dubai and then headed to Syria.

Following the direction of the Ministry of Home Affairs, a case has been filed under section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, sections 17 (punishment for raising funds for terrorist acts), 18 (punishment for conspiracy), 18B (punishment for recruiting for terrorist act), 20 (for being member of terrorist gang)and 38 (for being associated with a terrorist organisation) among others.