A Bengaluru man who has been missing for around seven years and was suspected to have joined the Islamic State is now known to have been killed in Syria.
As per the sources, the death of Faiz Masood had been confirmed by a doctor arrested in Bengaluru recently by the NIA in connection with an Islamic State Khorasan Province case. Abdur Rahman, an opthalmologist, was among the Bengaluru youths who travelled to Syria in 2013-14 to join the IS.
During the investigations, it was revealed that Masood was 27-year-old and a business management graduate when he left his parents, wife, and two young children. He was closely associated with the IS in Syria and Iraq and was a key contact in Syria for Bengaluru youths trying to join the terror outfit.
Questioning by the NIA, other central and state agencies of Rahman and an alleged associate, a fellow doctor, also from Bengaluru has reportedly revealed that the two of them had met Masood at the Syrian border town of Atme, when they crossed over from a Turkey refugee camp in end 2013, according to a report in The Indian Express.
Masood had left for Qatar in September 2013 and disappeared soon after. His disappearance was not reported to the police by his family. Security agencies stumbled upon his name in 2014-15, as being one of those from India possibly killed in fighting in Syria, when they began looking closely at identities of IS recruits from India.
An online blog Masood maintained between 2010 and 2011 shows he was deeply affected by the plight of poor Muslims in Bengaluru. In blog posts in 2010, he sought funds for an orphanage, extolled Muslims to donate blood, and narrated stories of a child and a young man in dire need of funds for medical care to save their lives.
In March 2010, he wrote, “The Muslim community might be a minority in this country but when it comes to the population of the slums we are the majority. Many efforts are being made to improve the condition of the people. But unless the realization and awareness of their condition doesn’t spread among the family (Muslims) things will not change.”
Multiple agencies after carrying out investigations have revealed that Masood was part of a group of wealthy Muslim youths from east Bengaluru who met often in 2012-13 and discussed religion. Several from the group later left to join the IS when it was established around mid-2013.
