All the 21 missing people from Kerala travelled to Tehran and from where they may have proceeded to join the Islamic State, immigration reports accessed by CNN-News18 on Tuesday suggested.
The reports said the young men and women, along with three children, flew to the Iranian capital from different cities in India.
They travelled on different dates between May and June 2016 and all of them left for Tehran via different Gulf cities on tourist visas.
Sources said it was very clear with their visas that their travel plans were known to each other.
The first batch of two people left on May 24 on the Bengaluru-Kuwait flight; the second batch of three people left on May 31 on the Mumbai-Muscat flight; the third batch of three people left on June 2 on the Mumbai-Dubai flight; the fourth batch of three people left on June 3 on the Hyderabad-Muscat flight;the fifth batch of three people left on June 5 on the Mumbai-Dubai flight; the sixth batch with two people left on June 16 on the Bengaluru-Muscat flight;the seventh batch of two people on June 19 on the Bengalaru-Muscat flight and the last person left on July 5 on the Mumbai-Abu Dhabi flight.
At least 19 out of the 21 have moved on from Tehran and agencies suspected they have crossed the border into Iraq or Syria to join the IS.
The 21 Muslims went missing from the districts of Kasaragod and Palakkad over the last one month promoting the Kerala government to launch a probe for suspected terror links.
"The entire state is against such terrorist activities. Only a small percentage is showing such inclination and all efforts are being made to track them down," Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said.
At least four out the 21 individuals belong to Christian and Hindu families and had converted to Islam over a year ago.
Two of the missing even sent text and voice messages to their families confirming that they have moved to a "remote location."
Comments
0 comment