One of the 21 youngsters who went missing from Kerala to allegedly join Islamic State, has reportedly called up his mother and said that he is in Afghanistan, practicing Salafi Islam. 

Ashfaque Majeed, reportedly told his mother that all the missing youth were safe and they follow true Islam. He also said that he would open a medical store there and may not return to India. 

A report by Rashmi Rajput for The Indian Express states that in the phone conversation that lasted five minutes, Asfaque denied he joined the IS. The conversation details were collected by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) team probing the missing case. Sources from the NIA told IE that Asfaque asked his mother not believe the ‘fake’ news about him.

“He told her that he was staying in a remote village in Afghanistan where the mobile network is weak and that he had traveled to a town just to speak to her. He also informed her that he and the others had fled India as they were unable to follow ‘true Islam’ back home,” IE quotes the sources from NIA.

Earlier, Asfaque had sent a voice messages to his family members asking them to leave India and join him in land of Islam. Ashfaque’s father, Abdul Majeed runs a hotel in Mumbai.

The IE report also says that Majeed had revealed it was Arshi Qureshi, guest manager with Zakir Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation, who funded all the 21 missing youngsters to attend a Quran learning program in Sri Lanka before they left India. Qureshi, who was arrested by NIA, has not yet revealed his involvement in the case, report says.