Four boys from Thane district, who joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or IS), could possibly have been fished using social networking sites, according to intelligence sources.
“For the past couple of years, there has been a big hate campaign on the Internet. Several boys across India have been hooked. This group has been fished by the IS recruiters through social networking,” the sources said.
According to them, once they are done with “online indoctrination”, they are called for jobs in the Gulf, from where they are convinced to join the fight - and in the process of recruitment it is ensured that there is no past record.
The four — Areb Fayyaz Majeed, Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, Aman Naim Tandel and Shaheen Farooqi Tanki — youths are all in their twenties. They have no past in radical Islamist politics or criminal record. They were all residents of Dudh Naka-Govindwadi area of Kalyan (West) in Thane district of Maharashtra.
While Afeb (also known as Arif) returned to India and he is currently under custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA), it has come to light now that Tanki has died.
“In social networking sites, there are lot of incriminating material. Because of the nature of social media, these cannot be controlled fully. The unfortunate part of it is that several Muslim youth are browsing, logging on and viewing different websites and webpages of incriminating nature,” they pointed out.