IITian, cricketer: How a bright lad’s path spun towards a terror outfit

Tauseef Ali Farooqui was a promising cricketer. Known for his left-arm spin in the neigbourhood where he lived in Delhi and the cricket academy, the lad even aspired to play for India one day. He distinguished himself academically too — it took him just a single attempt to crack the IIT entrance exams after passing out from Sanskriti School in Delhi’s Chanakyapuri area. He enrolled as a student of biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. Now, in his final year at IIT, the 22-year-old has been arrested by Assam Police under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for openly expressing his goal of joining terror outfit Islamic State (IS) on emails and a LinkedIn post. A fourth-year student, Farooqui was taken into custody on March 23. Assam Police’s Special Task Force (STF) inspector general Parthasarathi Mahanta said there was credible evidence linking him to IS that was uncovered during his interrogation.He was detained at Hajo in Assam’s Kamrup district while he was on his way to join IS and is in police custody till April 3. medium108869298Assam Police said that in an “open letter” on LinkedIn, Farooqui had “disassociated” himself from the “Indian-construct (sic) that includes the so-called Indian Constitution, its institutions and so on”. He is said to have declared his intention to go to the Islamic State-Khorasan province, regional branch of the terror outfit active in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to pledge his allegiance to the IS leadership.His post said, “My first step after my repentance is to make Hijrat [emigration] toward Muslimeen [Muslims)] to a region known as Islamic State-Khorasan province to pledge my allegiance to the Muslim Leadership [Islamic State]…It is a fight between Muslimeen [those who have surrendered to Allah] and Kafireen [infidels].” Assam STF additional superintendent of police Kalyan Kumar Pathak said that a black flag, "purportedly similar to that of ISIS", was found in his hostel room and was being sent for verification to specialised agencies which deal with proscribed outfits.The IIT student’s electronic devices are being forensically analysed. Another student from the institution, also from Delhi, is being probed for terror links too. medium nocaption108869679Normal childhood, wrong turn What explains this promising life gone awry? The distressed family, which lives in the fairly affluent section of southeast Delhi’s Zakir Nagar, puts it down to his deteriorating mental health. The first signs were noticed during the Covid period when Farooqui began isolating himself, they said. His family, originally from Bihar, moved to Delhi almost two decades ago. The family, comprising Farooqui, his parents, an elder brother and a younger sister, is educated and professionally well established. There was nothing in his childhood that indicated this radical shift in the youth’s later life. By all accounts, Farooqui had a normal childhood. Neighbours at Zakir Nagar remember him as a “dutiful and simple child”. His sister, two years younger than him, claimed that growing up, he was almost indifferent about religion. “He used to love his sleep so much that at times he would rather miss namaz than wake up. His only obsession was to top the class and score the highest marks,” said the sister.medium108871967 It was during the Covid pandemic-induced lockdown when youngster had suddenly begun isolating himself. When the mother and the other two siblings moved to their maternal aunt’s home in south Delhi during the lockdown, Farooqui stayed back. “He spent his time locked in a room studying. Since students had to study online because of the school closure, we didn’t question Tauseef much about it,” said his aunt, still dazed by the revelation of her nephew’s social media posts. The family members also remember the odd behaviour of Farooqui at the time. He stopped listening to music, for one, and tried several times, failing each time, to go off social media. Despite his earlier disinterest in religion, the youth also puzzled his kin by saying that watching television was haram (forbidden). medium108869378 With UAPA being invoked against Farooqui, the family is concerned about his future. They say his institution should have intervened to help a student facing mental health issues. His elder brother, who too studies at an IIT, said, “We were told that he was not socialising with anyone in his institution. IIT claims to have the best teachers and student counsellors and so should have come to his aid and prevented him from doing what he did.” “We are only worried at the cusp of our careers that we don’t get targeted for Tauseef’s actions. However, till now police have been very helpful and we hope to get him back,” the brother added.At the small boutique run by the mother in the locality, Farooqui’s sister recalled her brother’s past. “It was our mother who mostly raised us. While all three of us were good in studies, Tauseef always scored the best marks.” Farooqui was a science stream student at Delhi’s upscale Sanskriti School before deciding he wanted to take up engineering. The sister said, “People take a gap year and go to Kota and other education hubs to prepare for the IIT-JEE. But Tauseef did not need any of that. His preparation for the entrance exams was self-study and yet in his very first attempt, he was able to get into IIT Guwahati." medium108869652IS spreading its net to catch engineers?Farooqui is alleged to have been radicalised by the same set of Syria-based recruiters on Telegram who were also in touch with IS-inspired modules that were recently busted in Delhi and Pune. Intelligence agencies suspect that a specific set of online entities was behind the radicalising educated youths, particularly engineering students in Delhi and other parts of the country. Other students allegedly radicalised by these online entities include Arshad Warsi, an MTech graduate from Jamia Millia Islamia, and Mohammed Shahnawaz, a BTech from NIT Nagpur arrested in Delhi last October. Harris Farooqui, a BTech graduate, was also arrested recently. The trio was part of the same module with roots in Delhi, Aligarh and Pune and Harris had a leadership role in these modules. After the arrests, police said that Harris was in touch with a “foreign-based handler” through secret communication apps. He was also accused of radicalising and recruiting gullible youth, both physically and on social media, to join IS. “For this purpose, they shared incriminating videos of act of pledging allegiance, along with materials related to jihad,” said an officer. Shahnawaz, arrested by Delhi Police’s Special Cell last October, was in touch with a Syria-based Telegram entity named Jamal since 2017. A police report said Jamal was an Afghan national who was later killed in the Taliban-IS war in February 2018. The reports also said, “They were also contacted by two entities in the name of Huzaifa al Bakistani and Qasim Khurasani, who were also Afghani nationals.” Police clarified these accounts on Telegram and chat platform Rocket, etc, are run by different entities.