One of the four terrorists involved in the terror attack on Sikhs in Kabul was a 30-year-old shopkeeper who had fled along with 14 other youths from Kerala to join the Islamic State (ISIS) four years ago.
The Islamic State on Friday published a photo of Abu Khalid al-Hindi, a suicide attack fighter who was part of the four-member team that attacked a Sikh shrine in Kabul, killing at least 25 members of the minuscule minority community in Afghanistan on Wednesday.
Top sources said that al-Hindi was Mohammed Sajid Kuthirulmmal, a shopkeeper from Padne area of Kasargod in Kerala who was wanted in a 2016 NIA case and had an Interpol red notice against him.
The case refers back to 2016 when a man from Kasaragod lodged a police complaint, stating that his 30-year-old son Abdul Rashid was missing along with his wife Ayisha (Sonia Sebastian) and child, for almost two months after they had gone to Mumbai.
Around the same time, 21 other cases of missing people including Sajid were registered by their parents and relatives in the police station of the same area. Preliminary investigation revealed that the missing persons had left India to join Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a banned pan-Islamist terrorist organisation.
The NIA investigation revealed that Abdul Rashid, Yasmeen and others from 2015 were involved in activities to further the objectives of ISIS in Kerala and other places of India. 15 people including Sajid had fled from Kerala, India to join the terror group in Nangarhar province in Afghanistan.
Though the NIA did not file a charge sheet against Sajid, he was listed as an accused and absconder in the case.
Rashid and many others were killed in Afghanistan. A few of the women who had fled Kerala had surrendered a few months ago.
Though the NATO and Afghan forces claim to have killed most ISIS members in Nangarhar, sources believe many may have escaped. Sources said Sajid clearly was one of those who escaped unscathed from Nangarhar.
The mobile communication between the absconders with their relatives, over internet-based social media platforms, recovered during the investigation, established that Sajid was staying at the same place as another ISIS recruit who had fled from Kerala and had joined the terror group along with Abdul Rashid.
With inputs from IANS