New Delhi

Bindu, mother of one of four Kerala women, who had joined Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Afghanistan and are now in prison in Afghanistan after their husbands died in drone attacks, has requested the government to take a humanitarian view of her daughter’s crime and get her back home.

Bindu Sampath of Attukal, Palakkad, Kerala told Matribhoomi newspaper she was shocked by the media reports about India not too keen to get her daughter, who is lodged in a jail in Kabul following the death of her husband in a drone attack, and three other women from Kerala back home.

Bindu Sampath said, “Being an Indian, it’s my human right. Did I committee any offence against the country?”

She said she had informed the Kerala Police in time about her daughter and son-in-law’s plan of leaving the country to join ISIS. She asked why the authorities didn’t stop her then. “Now why do they want my daughter to be killed. The US army will withdraw from Afghanistan on September 11. What will happen to her?” he asked.

Bindu said she would continue to campaign for her daughter’s return home.

It was Bindu who had first identified her daughter Nimisha Kumar as the batch of Indian jihadis in Khorasan, when the NIA sleuth came to her with pictures.

Nimisha and her husband Benson Vincent had converted to Islam and left for ISIS territory in Afghanistan along with their son and assumed the names of Fatima Isa and Isa respectively.

According to reports the four Indian ‘jihadi widows’ who had surrendered to the Afghan forces after their husbands were killed in a drone attack and had been lodged in a jail in Kabul, are unlikely to return home as the government is hesitant on their repatriation.

All the four identified as Sonia Sebastian alias Ayesha, Rafaela, Merin Jacob Palath alias Maryam and Nimisha alias Fatima Isa  hail from Kerala and were part of what is known as the “Palakkad ISIS module.”

They had got radicalized by an Islamic State’s frontman in Kerala Abdul Rashid,  who along with Sonia Sebastian, an engineering graduate, ran classes for radicalizing the youth.

They all had got converted to Islam and left for the Utopia of the Islamic State of Khorasan in the mountains of Afghanistan.

The Afghan government has request Delhi for their repatriation but the government is yet to take a final call. Though at the bureaucratic level it has been decided that since all the women continue to be highly radicalized and under the influence of an extreme ideology, it’s not wise to get them back.

However, the final decision will have to be taken at the political level to balance between security perception and the humanitarian issue keeping in mind that they were targetted and are under the influence of SIS with whom they have been associated since 2018.

The families of these girls are likely to put pressure on the government to get them back to India on humanitarian considerations.

On 27 April, Ahmed Zia Sarraj, the head of the National Directorate of Security, of Afghanistan, told reporters in Kabul that 408 Islamic State members from 13 countries are lodged in various prisons in Afghanistan. This includes four Indians, 16 Chinese, 299 Pakistanis, two Bangladeshis, two Maldivians and others.

Saraj said that the Afghan government has started talks with 13 countries to deport prisoners. While Afghan officials in Delhi declined to comment. Senior officials in Kabul indicated that they were waiting for India to see what it proposes to do.

According to the report, the women, along with their children were questioned by Indian security agencies in Kabul in December 2019, a month after their surrender.

In March 2020, the political affairs website 'StentNewsGlobal. Com' had released a video of the interrogation of the three women, in which the four women who appeared were identified

According to the report, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) had filed the charge sheet in 2017 after a group of 21 men and women from Kerala, including Sebastian, left India in 2016 to join the ISKP in Afghanistan. They reached Afghanistan on foot from Iran.

Merin Jacob Palath Maryam was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. Both fled to Afghanistan in 2016 to live in IS-controlled areas. The couple had converted to Islam after marriage. Vincent was called Yahya. Vincent was later killed in an encounter in Afghanistan.

Vincent's brother Bexon and his wife Nimisha alias Fatima also converted to Islam. They too fled to Afghanistan with them. Refeela was married to Eijas Kalluketiya Purail, 37, a doctor from Kasaragod, who was possibly one of the IS terrorists to storm a prison.