A 16-year-old girl from Pune, whom the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) had detained and grilled intensely last week after it came to know about her plans to join international outfit Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is undergoing a de-radicalisation programme of the
ATS, with the help of her family members and community leaders.
Pune-based ATS officer Bhanupratap Barge said that having been indoctrinated online by her ISIS contacts abroad, the “highly intelligent” the XI standard girl had made up her mind to go to Syria to join the ISIS, when the police detained and questioned her last week.
“We questioned the girl last week after we monitored her movements closely for some days. Our questioning confirmed her initiation by the ISIS. The questioning also revealed that she was ready to go to any extent to carry out the ISIS directives,” Barge said.
The ATS had detained the girl after intercepting a conversation between the teenager and her recruiters from other countries.
The investigations have revealed that the minor girl was drawn to the ISIS four months ago, when she came in contact — through the internet — with a person from Sri lanka and some others from other countries on a variety of social media
platforms like Facebook
and Twitter.
The minor girl took interest in the ISIS ideology after she reportedly watched a documentary on TV and subsequently started regularly monitoring news about the terror outfit on Al Jazeera channel.
“She used the internet to get in touch with ISIS. In the proes, she got in touch with at least 200 young people from different countries. Our interrogation of her revealed that her contracts asked her to come to Syria for medical education and for further initiation,” Barge said.
The girl was planning to leave for Syria next year to join the international terror outfit, the ATS officer said.
In a change that came in her after she was drawn to ISIS, the girl, who used to wear jeans and tops in the past, started wearing burqas in recent months. “Even her family members noticed the change in her and felt disturbed,” Barge said.
“After we questioned her for her alleged links with ISIS contracts, her family members put her to the de-radicalisation programme of the ATS, with the help of community clergy and family members. The programme is proving to be helpful for her,” Borge said.
The discovery that the ISIS had nearly succeeded in “brain-washing” the teen-aged girl into joining the ISIS has become a major cause of concern for the State ATS. This is given that Pune has over the years emerged as a haven for the Indian Mujahideen (IM) sleeper cells.
Pune has been on the radar of IM terrorists since 2010. So much so that a module of the IM - involved in the February 13, 2010 German Bakery blast in Pune which claimed 17 lives and left 54 others injured - had carried out reconnaissance of the. famous Dagdusheth Halwai Ganesh temple, at Budhwar Peth in downtown Pune.
Incidentally, an IM
operative Qateel Mohammed Jafar Siddiqui, who was murdered inside Pune’s high security Yerwada prison on June 8, 2012, had been booked by Maharashtra ATS for his aborted attempt to engineer a blast at Dagdusheth Ganesh temple on February 13, 2010.