HYDERABAD:In yet another incident that reveals how the tentacles of terror group Islamic State are reaching India, police arrested a woman recruiter of the dreaded jihadist group at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here on Thursday night.
The woman operative had allegedly motivated a city youth, who was intercepted by police on his way to Syria to join Islamic State, nine months ago.
The woman who was initially thought to be Nicky Joseph, a British national, turned out to be Hyderabad-born Afsha Jabeen (38), settled in Dubai. Jabeen alias Nicole Joseph alias Nicky Joseph alias Ayesha, and her husband Devendra Singh Batra alias Mustafa, along with three children were returning from Dubai when she was taken into custody.
Some reports suggested that UAE authorities had deported Jabeen. In January, police had arrested Salman Mohiuddin, a 32-year-old US-returned engineer, and resident of Bazarghat near Nampally here, while he was on his way to Syria via Dubai. He was picked up from Shamshabad airport hours before his scheduled flight to Dubai. During interrogation, he spilled the beans and named Nicky Joseph, who is said to have influenced him to join the IS. He told police that Nicky would receive him at Dubai. Further investigations revealed that Nicky Joseph was not a British national as claimed by Salman, but an Indian whose original name was Afsha Jabeen.
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It is believed that Salman was trying to mislead the police when he claimed that Afsha Jabeen was Ayesha who was a British-born woman and had converted to Islam and resided in Dubai. Investigators, however, found that Jabeen is a native of Towlichowki in Hyderabad and had migrated to Abu Dhabi in her childhood.
Drawn in by ‘Caliphate’
Afsha Jabeen started becoming interested in the jihadist group in 2014, after the outfit established a ‘caliphate’ in Iraq and Syria. She then began radicalising social media users.