More than three weeks have passed since the discovery of the mysterious disappearance of 21 Keralites who are feared to have joined the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria or Afghanistan but the Kerala Police has so far not been able to make much progress in the investigation in the absence of vital information and due to alleged lack of required coordination among the various agencies involved in the probe.

The efforts of the police’s investigators to get to the bottom of the shocking development are currently centred around the two persons they had managed to arrest from Mumbai with the help of the Maharashtra ATS, the messages allegedly sent by some of the missing persons that indicated that they might have joined the ISIS, the finding of how they had left India but sources say that these factors have not given any big push to the probe.

Though the police have reportedly received indications that one of those arrested, Arshi Qureshi, allegedly an associate of controversial preacher Zakir Naik, is an important link in the network that specializes in smuggling out to foreign countries those who embrace Islam through conversion he has so far remained firm in his stand that all he had been doing was to help those who wanted to convert.

Qureshi, who was associated with Naik’s Islamic Research Foundation in Mumbai, was arrested from Navi Mumbai on July 21 and Rizwan Khan, who had allegedly been functioning as a recruiting agent for the ISIS, was held from Kalyan near Mumbai the following day on the charge of radicalising young Keralites and recruiting them into the terror group.

The police had got the first indications that Qureshi could have been a key figure in the ISIS’s conversion network from a complaint lodged by Ebin Jacob (25), brother of Merin Jacob, a Christian girl from Kochi who had converted to Islam, got rechristened as Mariam and left India allegedly for joining the ISIS along with her husband Yahia, another Christian named Bestin Vincent who embraced Islam.

According to Ebin, Merin was converted under pressure when she was working in Mumbai. Yahia’s brother Essah, originally Becson Vincent who also had embraced Islam, had married Nimisha, a Hindu girl who became Fatima after converting to Islam. Essah, Yahia — both from Palakkad — and their wives had later gone missing and were suspected to have joined the ISIS.

However, sources said that Qureshi was continuing to deny any role in recruiting young men and women to the global terror force and was continuing to assert that all he had done was to help those who approached him showing interest in converting to Islam. It is said that Qureshi has already assisted about 700 persons from other religions to convert to Islam.

Holding fast to his position that he has nothing to do with the ISIS, Qureshi, who had allegedly been receiving money from unknown sources for making others convert to Islam, has reportedly told the police that those who had converted could have gone abroad in search of jobs and that all suspicions about his role might end once the missing persons were found.

Though the police had carried out inspections at the Kochi school where Mariam (Merin) had worked earlier and got evidences for suspicious financial transactions, they were not sure how important these could be in the search for the missing persons and their suspected entry into the ISIS, sources said.

“The police are doing an excellent job as far as the complaints received from Kasaragod (to where 17 of the 21 missing persons belonged), Palakkad and Kochi are concerned. But this case is very big and therefore the question is whether a state police force can take such an investigation to its conclusion,” said a former Intelligence official.

There seemed to be a lack of proper coordination between the Kerala Police and the Central agencies in the probe, he said, adding, “There were reports that most of the missing had reached Teheran on their way to Syria. Then there were the messages sent by some of the missing persons. I don’t think the State police is an agency that has the capabilities for probing such things deeply.”