THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: 17 young men who had gone missing and whose families suspected that they had joined the ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq & Syria) have been traced. The young men are doing well and are in India, not in Iraq or Syria as was suspected earlier.
But the most satisfying and reassuring fact is that the men had not joined the terror organization ISIS, but instead they had joined the anti-corruption political organization AAP (Aam Aadmi Party). The local police confirmed this.
“We are relived. There is no security risk, thus we are closing the case,” sub inspector Keerthinath Suresh from Pallakad police station announced in a press conference. “We have asked the men to contact their families soon so that they stop worrying. Rest of the nation also doesn’t need to worry.”
Police has not disclosed the names of the youth as they could be targeted by BJP supporters for joining AAP. However, the police allowed the journalists to talk to a few of them anonymously. The young men confirmed that they were in India and had joined AAP, not ISIS.
“We were so busy fighting for AAP on Facebook and Twitter that we could not get in touch with our families. For weeks we were online continuously trending hashtags to remove corruption and to defeat the communal conspiracies of BJP. We were ignoring messages of our own family members as we were very busy, and that’s why our families started worrying and thought we had left India and joined ISIS,” one of the young man said on speakerphone.
The young men confirmed that they were devout Muslims and wanted to have Islamic rule in India, but they said that they wanted to do that within the constitutional framework by joining AAP, and not by joining a terror organization like ISIS.
“We don’t blame our families as we indeed had praised the concept of Islamic State earlier, but after listening to speeches of Arvind Kejriwal, we realized that Islamic State can be formed in India through anti-corruption movement. Kejriwal Sir had earlier called Batla encounter fake and he also supported Mujahidins of JNU. We don’t need to support ISIS,” another man argued.
The press conferred was called off after the young men went back to supporting AAP online by exposing the crimes of 2002 riots as Arvind Kejriwal was in Gujarat.
The incident has been welcomed by neutral experts who believe that AAP could help defeat ISIS in India, but the BJP has attacked AAP for being soft on Islamic fundamentalism.
“BJP should stop indulging in politics on matters of national security. They should be congratulating Arvind Kejriwal who is stopping Indian youths from joining ISIS,” political analyst Abhay Kumar Dubey said.
