The Assam Police has detained Tauseef Ali Farooqui, a final-year student of biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati (IIT-G), who “pledged allegiance to terrorist group Islamic State (IS or ISIS)” through an open letter on social media.
Kalyan Kumar Pathak, additional superintendent of police of the Special Task Force (STF), in a press conference late on Saturday, said: “The Assam Special Task Force has detained IIT-G student Tauseef Ali Farooqui who claimed to have joined the ISIS. The particular student had gone missing since this morning. He had sent mails and posts on social media about his wish to join the ISIS. We traced him to Hajo of Kamrup district in Assam.”
“Tauseef didn’t have too many friends on the campus and mostly stayed indoors in his hostel. There are certain things we have recovered from his room. Among them is a black flag, suspected to be an ISIS flag, and a few manuscripts of his religion. He is being interrogated. We have sent the recovered items for forensic examination,” Pathak said.
STARTLING LETTER ON LINKEDIN
In ‘An Open Letter’ on LinkedIn posted on Saturday, Farooqui “disassociated” himself from the “Indian-Construct that includes the so-called Indian Constitution, its institutions and so on”.
“My first step after my repentance is to make Hijrat (emigration) toward Muslimeen (Muslims) to a region known as Islamic State-Khorasan province to pledge my allegiance to the Muslim-Leadership (Islamic State)…It is a fight between Muslimeen (those who have surrendered to Allah) and Kafireen (infidels)…,” the letter stated.
RECENT ARRESTS
The STF recently caught two leaders associated with ISIS in India — Haris Farooqi alias Harish Ajmal Farukhi and Anurag Singh alias Rehan. Both were intercepted in the Dharamshala of Dhubri near the international border.
It was found that Haris, originally from Chakrata, Dehradun, is the head of ISIS in India, and Anurag Singh from Panipat has been converted to Islam.
Partha Sarathi Mahanta, DIGP of STF, said, “Both of them are deeply indoctrinated members of the ISIS and have been involved in various illegal activities, including recruitment, terror funding and plotting attacks across India using improvised explosive devices (IEDs).”
The duo has been handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for further probe.
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