Kalyan youth who joined ISIS, calls home says won't return

Fahad Sheikh, one of the four Kalyan youth who left home to join the ISIS has been in touch with his family and friends but refused to come back home despite repeated appeals.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) is also said to be in contact with him. The four youths Arif Majeed, Shaheem Tanki, Fahad Shaikh and Aman Tandel had left India to visit holy places in the Middle East in May of last year but disappeared thereafter. They were suspected to have joined the middle-east terror group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

An NIA officer quoted in Hindustan Times said, “We have told them to continue talking to Sheikh and gather information, but whenever we urge him to return to India, Shaikh disconnects the call. We know he is in Iraq, but have not been able to trace the exact location,” he said.

He also reported that Tanki, one of the three still in Iraq had died a month ago. Incidentally it was Tanki who had called up Majeed’s family and told them that their son died fighting for IS in Syria and became a martyr.  

Majeed, returned to Mumbai in November and was interrogated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). He is currently being held at the Arthur road jail.