India wants legal assistance from Afghanistan to bring key IS recruiter Abdulla Abdul Rashid alias Abdul Rashid (who allegedly took 21 Keralites to IS-controlled territory in Afghanistan), back to the country.
After exploring various legal options to get Rashid and other IS recruits back to India, the National Investigation Agency has sent Letters Rogatory to Afghanistan to secure his custody. Letters Rogatory are formal requests to a foreign court for lending any kind of judicial assistance.
Rashid has been chargesheeted by the NIA in the case relating to the radicalisation of 21 Keralites luring them to IS- controlled Nangarhar province in Afghanistan.
All eyes were on Rashid when recently an audio clip, transmitted through telegram messenger, surfaced exhorting “lone wolf “ attacks at Hindu religious congregations in India, sending security agencies on alert. Rashid’s voice was identified by the agency which has been on its feet exploring ways to crack down on the IS network being run by Rashid from Afghanistan.
Rashid ran the IS recruitment drive initially luring 21 Keralites, including women and children, to perform Hijra (religious journey) to IS controlled Nangarhar province in 2016, and later created a WhatsApp group trying to lure more youth to join them, sources in the NIA said. He has also made at least 50 audio clips of terror threats in the last two years exhorting youth belonging to the minority community to carry out “lone wolf” attacks in the country. In his latest audio clip, he specifically named the Kumbh Mela and Thirssur Pooram, which are Hindu religious congregations, as possible terror targets.
The IS recruiter, who hails from Kasargod in Kerala, gave the example of the recent deadliest gun massacre in the US where a lone wolf gunman carried out a mass shooting at a festival crowd in Las Vegas in the first week of October .
The audio clip in Malayalam was analysed by the NIA which, having had his voice identified, now wants him as well as the absconding Keralites be handed over from Afghanistan. "Various legal options have been explored to bring him as well as the other Indians, who are in the IS controlled territory in Afghanistan, back. “Letters Rogatory have been sent to Afghanistan since we believe Rashid is still there and is actively carrying out anti-India activities. We are actively looking into the matter,'' said a senior official.
The NIA has also unconfirmed reports of some of the absconding Indians suffering ill-health, but officials said there has been no recent communication between them and their families in Kerala which have come under the radar of the intelligence agencies. "Till we have evidence, we cannot say what has been the fate of these Indians living there,'' said an official. The crackdown by the NIA and local police had led to the WhatsApp group being abandoned virtually cutting off all channel of communication. The latest audio clip sent by Rashid is the latest evidence with the NIA of his continuing activities from the IS controlled territory in Afghanistan.
It may be recalled that a group of people, comprising 13 men, six women and three children, is learnt to have had left their houses in Kasargod and Palakkad districts of Kerala between mid-May and first week of July last year. According to the NIA, all of them had left India from Bengaluru, Hyderabad or Mumbai airports for Kuwait, Dubai, Muscat or Abudhabi from where they are learnt to have travelled to Afghanistan through Iran.
