KANHANGAD: Kunhabdulla alias Abdulla Theruvath groggily opens the door of his quaint house close in Lakshmi Nagar. He was half expecting the knock from the press.
"So they have made it public," says the seventy years old man, referring to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) apprehending his youngest son, Mouinudheen Parakadavath (25) for allegedly being part of an ISIS module.
"We have been suppressing our grief for the past two months, not letting our neighbors know what has befallen us," says Safiya (64), the suspect's mother, who came out to greet us.
The NIA released a statement saying Mouinudheen arrived in New Delhi from Abu Dhabi on Tuesday (February 14) and was arrested on Wednesday. "That's not the truth. He was picked up by the Abu Dhabi police two months ago. He had telephoned me from the prison at least a couple of times," says Abdulla, who returned to Kerala long years ago after working in restaurants and canteens in Abu Dhabi. "I believe the embassy must have brought him to Delhi," he says.
Two-and-a-half months ago, NIA officers called on the aged parents saying their son was in touch with the people connected to the Islamic State.
"They told us they wanted to question him, but assured us he was not in trouble," he says. "So I gave them his contact details and they got him arrested by the Abu Dhabi police."
The NIA alleged Mouinudheen was a "key figure" in the ISIS module busted in Kanakamala Hill in Kannur district on October 2, 2016. "Mouinudheen was using the online identity Abu-Al-Indonesi and Ibn Abdullah on the Telegram," it said in a statement.
Those arrested from Kanakmala reportedly told the NIA that Mouinudheen had sent money from Abu Dhabi to members of the module through Western Union Money Transfer last year.
Unlike the highly qualified group that went missing from Padna and Trikaripur in the district last May, Mouinudheen is only class 10 pass. "His brothers took him to Abu Dhabi five years ago, when he was 19 years, so that he would not fall in bad company," says Abdulla.
The brothers -- Mahmood (40) and Rasheed (32) -- employed him as a salesman in their computer sales and service shop. "He went there so as to support us," says Safiya. Before his arrest in Abu Dhabi, he used to call his mother once in a while. "The conversations are not too long. I will tell him my requirements and he will promise to send them over, but he never does," she says.
Mouinudheen regularly turns up at the computer shop. After his shift, he is always on his mobile phone or computer "like any youngster today", says the father. He will not get himself knowingly involved with anything like the IS, he says. "If at all he fell in the trap, I will blame it on the naivety of youth and not on religious zeal. Our family is not zealous," he says.
When Mouinudheen spoke to his parents last from a prison in Abu Dhabi, he told them there was no truth in the allegation and he would come out of it.
Abdulla and Safiya -- both partially blind and have undergone multiple surgeries -- are waiting for the NIA to produce their son before the special court in Kerala.
"Things will be clear only after that," says Abdulla. But the mother, in the late stages of diabetes, cannot keep her composure any longer. "My head is bursting but I don't want to die without seeing him once. Just once," she says.