It was his love for a woman he met online that landed Mumbra resident Farhan Mohammed Rafiq Sheikh (21) in prison and also earned him the tag of an Islamic State (IS) suspect. The woman, suspected to be from Tunisia, not only duped him of money but never turned up as promised to marry and travel with him to Syria.
Sheikh, along with two others was deported from Dubai in January this year and arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) for allegedly being part of the UAE module of terror outfit IS.
Sheikh, worked as a hardware engineer in Dubai for the past three years.
As reported by The Hindu earlier, Sheikh lost his mother in an accident when he was one-and-a-half years old, and his father disappeared shortly thereafter. He was raised by the sister of his maternal grandmother.
According to NIA officials, Sheikh was duped by the Tunisian woman of at least 5000 Dirhams (around Rs 91,000), which he paid to her in different instalments. The woman who identified herself as Sarah Garibai came in contact with Sheikh two years ago through Facebook. They had common interest in the propaganda being spread by IS and discussed jihad for long hours. To avoid detection, he later on switched to a Russian messaging service- Vkontakte to chat with her. The messaging service is difficult to intercept, officials say.
“The woman curiously never spoke to him on phone, they only chatted on the Russian messaging service. She told him that she had to undergo a major surgery and needed money for the same. She even gave an address, whom she said was that of a cousin, where the money could be sent to. He had sent around 5,000 dirhams to her,” said a senior official who interrogated Sheikh.
Sheikh suspected something was fishy when Garibai stopped coming online and refused to reply to his e-mails.
“He assumed another identity and contacted her. Garibai narrated the same story again that she was unwell and required money to get a surgery done. It was like a déjà vu for Sheikh and he was convinced that he had been duped,” said the official.
Official crackdown
Sheikh’s miseries did not end there. In July 2015, UAE authorities detained him and two others for spreading IS propaganda online.
“UAE authorities have zero tolerance for people who use their soil to propagate extremist ideologies. He was immediately taken into custody and preparations began to deport him to India,” said the official.
Sheikh is presently in judicial custody and the NIA is all set to submit a chargesheet against him in court.
