Police checking if IS recruits called Haneef from Kuwait, Dubai

MUMBAI: Crime branch officials have seized two mobile phones from Kerala-based Salafi preacher Mohammad Haneef and claimed that he received several phone calls from

MUMBAI: Crime branch officials have seized two mobile phones from Kerala-based Salafi preacher Mohammad Haneef and claimed that he received several phone calls from Kuwait and Dubai during the period in which 21 youngsters from Kerala, who are believed to have joined ISIS, went missing. Haneef is under arrest for allegedly indoctrinating them.

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Officials are still ascertaining the identities of the callers and checking if they included some of the 21 young men.

Haneef was arrested after Abdul Majeed Kadar Khan, 60, the father of Ashfaque, one of the missing men, lodged a complaint with the Nagpada police claiming Haneef was responsible for radicalising his son.

Investigators said some of the callers from the two countries are acquaintances and distant relatives of Haneef but the police are still checking the identities of other callers and the nature of their conversations with Haneef.

According to the police, one of the 21 suspected ISIS recruits, Hafeezuddin, 23, was working at his father’s shop in Dubai.

He got married a couple of months ago and was also in touch with Ashfaque and Abdul Rasheed Abdulla, another of the 21. A source said another man from the group has been identified as Mohammad Sajid, 24, and that his last known location was Dubai.

“There are several aspects that will be probed during a joint interrogation of Haneef, Arshid Qureshi (guest relations officer of preacher Zakir Naik’s non-profit Islamic Research Foundation) and Rizwan Khan (another arrested preacher). We will seek their (Qureshi’s and Khan’s) custody from the Kerala police soon,” said a crime branch officer.

The crime branch is expected to get custody of the two next week.

Officers from the crime branch are already in Kerala, where they are recording the statements of employees of Peace International School in Kozhikode and relatives and friends of Ashfaque and Haneef.