Days after it was reported that the Modi government was unlikely to allow the return of four ISIS terrorists to India from Afghanistan, the mother of one such woman has expressed hope that PM Modi will pardon her daughter.
Bindu Sampath, the mother of ISIS terrorist Nimisha Fathima said, “I’ve heard that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a very kind-hearted person. I have full faith in him.” Bindu lamented that she had not received any communication from the Indian government so far. “But I am very positive because there will be other views also in the government. I am banking on that. I believe in God. I am sure that God will create a situation for her return,” she opined.
The mother of the ISIS terrorist wished to meet PM Modi and submit a memorandum, seeking her daughter’s repatriation to India. Bindu emphasised that she would follow the legal route to bring Nimisha Fathima back. “I have consulted some lawyers of the Supreme Court. They have said there is a legal option,” she added. Bindu lamented that her daughter might fall into the hands of the Taliban once the US forces withdraw from Afghanistan in September 2021.
“Afghanistan will be under the control of militant groups, including the Taliban, when the US troops return from Afghanistan. The government in that country has said it will release those who are imprisoned in connection with IS cases. But the Union government has not responded…It has been a year and a half since I found out that my daughter is in an Afghan prison, but attempts to get her back have not worked,” she said. Bindu informed that she had received no response to the emails written to Home Minister Amit Shah.
Four couples from Kerala had joined Islamic State: NIA
Nimisha Fathima was a Hindu prior to her conversion to Islam. She adopted the name of ‘Fathima Isa’ after her marriage with an ISIS terrorist. She along with 19 others from Kerala flew to Afghanistan in June 2016 to wage a war against the US forces in ISIS-controlled Khorasan Province. She had given birth to a child there. After her terrorist husband was neutralised, she surrendered to the Afghan government in 2019. The other women were identified as Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, and Raffaela. They had expressed the desire to return back to India.
According to the charge sheet filed by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in 2017, Sebastian had left India in 2016 to join the ISKP in Afghanistan along with a group of 21 men and women from Kerala. They had crossed over to Afghanistan on foot from Iran. The NIA said Sebastian, from Kasargod in Kerala, left India on May 31, 2016, with her husband, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, from Mumbai airport.
They had said the couple held secret classes supporting IS and jihad during the last part of Ramzan in Padanna and Kasaragod. Sebastian is an engineering graduate. Another IS sympathiser, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam, was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. The couple escaped to Afghanistan in 2016 to live in the IS-controlled territory. Later, the Chrisitan couple converted to Islam after their marriage, and Vincent assumed the identity of Yahya. Vincent was later killed in Afghanistan.
Similarly, Vincent’s brother Bexon and his wife, Nimisha alias Fathima, also converted to Islam and escaped to Afghanistan with them. Raffaela was married to a 37-year-old physician Ijas Kallukettiya Purayil a physician from Kasargod. The couple is believed to have stormed a prison in a terror attack in Eastern Afghanistan’s Jalalabad in August 2020. Around 30 persons were killed in the attack.