Arif Majeed, the 23-year-old resident of Kalyan, who shocked the country when he, along with three of his friends, escaped to Syria to join the dreaded IS or Islamic State as jihadis, was brought back to Mumbai from Turkey on Friday morning by the National Investigative Agency (NIA). Late in the night, the NIA formally arrested him in Mumbai. It's not clear under what charges he has been arrested.
All four of them had separated from a group of 40 from Mumbai which had gone on a tour of religious sites in the Middle East in May. It is now almost clear that Arif had turned himself him in to Indian officials in Turkey after his experiments with the IS did not go according to plan.
Some reports suggested that he had fought valiantly and was given full freedom by the IS bosses and he then escaped to Turkey. So the question is whether Arif is a terrorist or a terrorised young man.
When Arif was brought to Mumbai, his mother Rezia told dna: "We are very happy to know that our son is safe."
"Arif had undergone intense terror training. He got hit in an air strike. His health was not good and that is why he opted to come back. This shows that he had gone to Iraq with the intention of joining ISIS," said the officer. The ISIS or IS, as it is known now, is led by the shady Iraqi cleric Baghdadi and has attracted jihadis from all over the world, even fromEurope and the UK.
They have recently started beheading British and US citizens, live on video, to claim its position as the number one jihadi organisation fighting for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate by bringing in most countries of the Middle East under its sway.
