Thiruvananthapuram: In the first case related to recruitment of cadres for Daesh in Kerala, a National Investigation Agency court in the state has sentenced a woman recruiter to seven years in prison.
The court in Kochi found that Yasmin Mohammed Zahir, a native of Bihar, had links to Daesh and had sent 15 recruits for the group to Afghanistan from Kerala’s northern district of Kasaragod.
Police detained Yasmin at the Delhi airport and arrested her as she was attempting to leave India along with her son in July 2016.
Kerala police believe she was attempting to join her husband Abdulla Rashid in Afghanistan when she was apprehended in Delhi.
She is also suspected to have had links with one Abdul Rashid Abdulla who had disappeared from Kasaragod district in mysterious circumstances.
Yasmin had managed to be employed by a school in Kerala, and it is believed that she got close to Abdul Rashid Abdulla during her tenure in the school, where he also worked. Police stumbled on some of these details after getting hold of her phone and laptop.
The Kasaragod police initially registered a case against her before turning it over to the NIA for further investigation. At the time of her arrest, police had found her with Rs70,000 (Dh3,954) and $620 (Dh2,276).
The NIA is investigating six other cases pertaining to recruitment for Daesh from Kerala. Some of the suspects in the cases are believed to have lost their lives in Afghanistan or other countries.
