A special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court on Tuesday granted bail to Islamic State (ISIS) recruit Areeb Majeed, a Kalyan resident who was arrested in November 2014 for having travelled to Iraq and then Syria to join the global terrorist outfit.
The court, however, stayed its own order till March 27 after NIA moved a plea stating that it wanted to challenge the bail granted to Mr. Majeed before the Bombay High Court. Mr. Majeed is the only ISIS recruit to have returned to India.
He and three other people — Fahad Shaikh, Shaheem Tanki and Aman Tandel — had left India for Iraq under the guise of pilgrimage in May 2014 and joined the ISIS. All of them later went to Syria, where the other three are believed to have been killed, while Mr. Majeed came back to India via Turkey in November 2014.
Earlier, he had moved a bail plea before the HC after it was rejected by the special NIA court. Mr. Majeed had pleaded that he has been in custody for over five years. The HC had then directed him to approach the NIA court again, and the court was asked to consider the plea afresh.
The NIA in its chargesheet against Mr. Majeed had claimed that he had participated in several attacks perpetrated by ISIS, and had sustained bullet injuries on two occasions, and was seriously injured in a bombing following which he had decided to return to India.
The agency claimed that Mr. Majeed wanted to sneak back into the country and had approached the Indian Embassy in Turkey on November 24, claiming that he had lost his passport and wanted to go back to India. It also claimed that Mr. Majeed was influenced by the terrorist group and its activities in the later half of 2013, and came in touch with Shaikh, who operated a twitter handle by the name @magnetgas which he used to propagate the ISIS ideology. Mr. Majeed then came in touch with Tanki and Tandel and they planned to join ISIS and went to Iraq by booking a pilgrimage package for ₹2,37,500.
The NIA claimed that the accused had gotten in touch with Rehman Daulati, an Afghan national, who had introduced them to an Iraqi national named Abu Fatima, who helped Mr. Majeed and others join ISIS. Mr. Majeed was taken to an ISIS camp at Jhazira, and was given a new name and was known as Abu Ali Al Hindi.
