Kasargode : In an alarming incident, at least 15 Muslims from Kerala are reportedly missing from the Middle East where they had gone recently for pilgrimage.
According to reports, the missing included five married couples, one of them with a two-year-old child. Out of 15, 11 hail from Padana and Trikaripur in Kasargod, while the remaining four are from Palakkad district.
They all are feared to have joined the Islamic State, The Indian Express has quoted relatives of the missing persons as saying.
Last week, some of their relatives received messages on WhatsApp from unknown numbers, which said the missing people have reached the place of “divine rule… Islamic State”.
One mobile number from which the message was sent had the country code of Afghanistan, while another messaged that he was near Syria border.
On Friday, P Karunakaran, MP from Kasaragod, met Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and sought an investigation into the whole incident.
The daily has quoted sources as saying that the 15 left their homes for the Middle East on different days in the last one month. However, they are believed to have been in touch with each other.
“It was only last week that we came to know that these missing persons knew one other. They are all educated youths, a few of them engineering and medical graduates. Some of them had worked in the Gulf and Bangalore before. They had never been associated with any political or religious organisation. But, over the last two years, they had turned orthodox, with the men sporting long beards,’’ said sources.
Meanwhile, Kerala DGP Lokanath Behera said: “We can’t come to any conclusions about their whereabouts. If tomorrow they all return, then the case would be a blunder. We don’t know who sent the messages and from where the messages originated. Besides, the families have not approached local police with a formal complaint.”
Notably, a Facebook group had come to light earlier this month which raised the fear of the presence of the Islamic State in Kerala. The page had posts in Malayalam and English. It was deactivated later.
Source : Zee News
