The suspected Islamic State (IS) operative from Kannur who arrested at the Indira Gandhi International Airport recently was under the radar of the district police for the past couple of months.
Shajahan V.K., a native of Koodali here, was reported to have been arrested by the anti-terror officers at the Indira Gandhi international airport after he was reportedly deported from Turkey.
Police sources here involved in monitoring suspected IS operatives and sympathisers confirmed that the district police had received information of the 32-year-old youth’s arrest on July 10.
The sources said the district police had got information about the youth four months ago when he was quizzed by the investigating agency at the airport on his first attempt to go to Turkey to join the IS was foiled. He had been under surveillance since then, they said.
By the time the police had sent personnel to his house at Koodali, 15 km from here, he gave them the slip, the sources said. The police had a tip-off that he had left for Chennai. But attempts to locate him there did not succeed, they said. He had been a functionary of a radical Muslim organisation in the State, they said.
The district police knew that he was totally committed to the ideology of the IS, a police officer here said adding that the youth would not have made the second attempt to go to Turkey if he had not been loyal to the IS. The officer also said the police here are also investigating some youths in the district who were suspected to have joined the IS in Syrian and Iraq.