The Cyberabad Police has taken into custody a suspected online recruiter of terrorist organisation Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Afshan Jabeen alias Nicky Joseph, after she landed at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport from Dubai on Friday morning.
It is believed that Afshan Jabeen, along with her husband and three daughters, was extradited by Dubai on the request of Indian security agencies and the entire operation was coordinated from New Delhi.
Sources said that a police team headed by Cyberabad Police Commissioner CV Anand was questioning Afshan Jabeen to find out how many youths she had recruited or motivated to join the terrorist organisation.
The police also detained her husband Devender Batra, alias Mustafa, at the airport
The police had been looking for her ever since it arrested 32-year-old man Salman Mohiuddin in January when he was trying to fly to Syria via Dubai with the intention of joining the ISIS.
He had revealed to the police that his girlfriend, a British woman by the name of
Nicky Joseph, who he had met online had motivated him to join the ISIS.
Mohiuddin, a resident of Habeeb Nagar in Hyderabad, has a Master’s in Science from Texas Southern University and he had returned to India in October from the US after undertaking many odd jobs there.
Sources said he came on the radar of US Intelligence agencies due to his online activities and his interaction with Nicky. After his arrest, Mohiuddin, who is already married, described Nicky as a British girl who had promised to marry him and asked him to elope with her to Syria to work with the ISIS. Salman told the investigators that he came in touch with the girl online during his stay in the United States.
US Intelligence officers who noticed that he had left a message on the website of the ISIS and also visited the social media pages of jehadi groups of Syria, alerted the Indian authorities about his plans to join the ISIS.
In a release, Cyberabad Police said: “Today on credible information Afshan Jabeen was taken into custody at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport when she arrived from Dubai. As she is a co-accused in Salman’s case she has been arrested and produced in court.”
The Cyberabad Police also said that during the investigation it was revealed that the woman was not a British national Nicky Joseph but an Indian woman whose real name is Afshan Jabeen and who hails from Toli Chowki in Hyderabad.
“She migrated to Abu Dhabi in her childhood and after completing high school she came to Hyderabad and did her graduation from Shadan College. She married one Devender Batra alias Mustafa,” the Press release said.