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Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday said Indian Muslims are “patriots” who could not be “influenced” by fundamentalist ideologies. Addressing scholars, strategic thinkers, field experts and policy makers at the three-day International Counter-Terrorism Conference in Jaipur, Singh said according to intelligence agencies, “just a handful of Indian youth (have) joined the ISIS”. He added that some of them have also “returned after being persuaded by their families”.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh

“I am happy to note that the influence of Islamic State on the Indian youth is negligible. The failure of ISIS to attract Indian Muslims, who constitute the second largest Muslim population in the world, is due to their complete integration into the national mainstream. Indian Muslims are patriots and are not swayed by fundamentalist ideologies. Extremism is alien to their nature,” Singh told the gathering at the inaugural session of the conference, organised by BJP general secretary Ram Madhav’s India Foundation in association with Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, Jodhpur.

He added: “India is home to all 72 firqas of Muslims and houses one of the oldest churches in the world. We have been practising the philosophy of peaceful coexistence for centuries”. Singh said the rising use of technology for destructive purposes has raised security concerns.“The computing power of your smartphone is greater than all the computing effort deployed to put a man on the moon in 1969. We have recently constituted an expert committee to look into all possible avenues of cybercrime and its linkages with the terrorist world,” Singh said.

Hitting out at Pakistan, Singh said “the source of most terrorist activity in India lies across our borders”. “It is unfortunate that even after paying such a heavy cost for itself, Pakistan and its associates find it difficult to understand that there are no good terrorists and bad terrorists,” he said and added that If the ISI and Pakistan army stop supporting terror outfits, the “security situation in South Asia will improve significantly”.

“I sincerely believe that Pakistan should seriously rethink its strategy of using terrorism as an instrument of proxy war and it would be in her own national interest,” the Home Minister said.

Indian IS recruit ‘killed’ in Syria

An Indian recruit in the Islamic State’s (IS) ranks has reportedly died fighting in Kobane, Syria. On Saturday night, IS supporters sent online messages announcing the death of an Indian with the nom de guerre Abu Abdullah Al Hindi.

“Another Indian lion got sahadah in kobane. May ALLAH accept abu Abdullah Al hindi,” tweeted a pro-IS Twitter handle, @magnetgass12, on March 14, at 9:44 pm. The message was accompanied by a photograph, purportedly of the fighter, seated behind a table with a pistol on it.

Security agencies believe this Twitter handle is being operated by one of the youths from Thane who went to Iraq to join the IS.As reported first in The Indian Express, days ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to India in January, a Twitter handle believed to be run by the youth — @magnetgas — called for a car bomb attack targeting the US President. The @magnetgas handle has been suspended on 11 occasions since then, only to resurface soon after with a serial number after “magnetgas” each time.Shortly after the first message announcing the death on Saturday, there was another tweet from the same handle. “Two indian lions abu Uthman al hindi and Abu Abdullah Al hindi got sahadah in khilafah,” it said, referring to the earlier reported death of Indian call centre employee-turned-IS recruit Saheem Tanki.

The tweet was accompanied by an image, purportedly of Tanki, shortly before he reportedly launched a “suicide bombing” in the northeastern Syrian city of al-Hasaka in January. The image first appeared online on January 16, along with messages proclaiming Tanki’s purported death in the suicide mission.

The Twitter handle also recorded what it claimed were Abu Abdullah Al Hindi’s last words — “Don’t forget to liberate India from kuffars” — as well as his purported statements on the Gujarat and Muzaffarnagar riots — “My eyes fills (sic) with tears when I think of the gujrat and Muzzafarnagar massacre on muslims by Hindus.”

These tweets reporting the jihadist’s purported death and his words were re-tweeted by several IS supporters.

Four youths — Areeb Majeed, Saheem Tanki, Amaan Tandel and Fahad Shaikh — left their homes in Thane and went to Iraq to join the IS last year. Majeed, a civil engineering student, returned to India nearly three months ago, after reportedly sustaining combat injuries near Mosul, and is now in the NIA’s custody. He was earlier reported to have been killed in fighting.

Kobane, situated in a largely Kurdish area in northwest Syria near the Turkish border, has seen heavy fighting in recent months, with the Kurdish fighters repelling the IS. The area was pounded by air strikes by US forces.