ISIS recruits poor youngsters by offering foreign 'appointment letters'

Islamic State, a global terror group, has started recruiting poor Indian youths under the garb of offering them lucrative jobs apparently from Iran and using fabricated appointment documents to give the entire operation a cover of genuineness, say security agency officials.

- RAHUL CHABBRA

“Such cases have been seen in at least 14 states,” said an official, adding the ISIS route for taking the youths starts at Porbandar port in India from where they are taken to Iran before being sent to Afghanistan.

Apart from terror recruits, ISIS operations in some pockets in the country have spread to such an extent that a module had self-declared the village of Padgha in rural Thane as a “liberated zone” and as “Al Sham”, according to investigators. The ISIS has managed to set up its base in 14 states including Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Gujarat, UP, Jharkhand, Goa, Bihar, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

The Coimbatore blast, the cooker blast in Karnataka and attempts to send five youths from Madhya Pradesh to Afghanistan are part of activities of these ISIS modules.