A group of Indian women who travelled to Afghanistan to join the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) between 2016 and 2018 have been interrogated by Indian security agencies in Afghanistan. The government is discussing if the women and their children could be allowed to return since their husbands have been killed in airstrikes and if so would they pose a security risk.
Stratnewsglobal.com, a strategic affairs website, published a video of the interrogation of three of the 10 women who are in the custody of Afghanistan authorities at a prison in Kabul. The questioning was done in December 2019.
Read: ‘Six Kerala men among Islamic State fighters in Syria’
The women are among thousands of IS fighters and affiliates, including children, who surrendered before the Afghanistan authorities from November-December last year.
A group of 21 men and women from Kerala left India in 2016 in batches to join the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Afghanistan.
The three women who appear in the video published by the web portal are Sonia Sebastian, alias Ayisha, Raffeala and Nimisha, alias Fathima Isa.
According to a 2017 chargesheet filed by National Investigation Agency (NIA), Sonia, a resident of Kasargod in Kerala, left India on May 31, 2016 with her husband, Abdul Rashid Abdulla, from Mumbai airport.
In her interview with the Indian security officials, Sonia says she came with her husband as he would have gone to Nangarhar in Afghanistan anyway and this way she got to spend three more years with him.
“Once we reached here many things were not up to our expectation; we came here expecting an Islamic life. No system here, people don’t come to thye masjid to pray five times a day. But the leaders didn’t do anything about it. He [her husband] stopped making audios (propaganda material). A brother who witnessed his death said his last words were ‘I am done with this duniya (world)’,” Sebastian is heard saying, accompanied by her little daughter. “I want to return to India and live with my in-laws,” she says.
The second woman, Nimisha, told interrogators that she had a comfortable life in Khilafah.
“In Daesh (IS) widows and orphans will be taken care of, money will be provided without getting remarried,” she says.
Nimisha converted to Islam and travelled with her husband and child to join the IS. Her mother Bindhu has made several appeals asking her to come back.
The third Indian woman in the video, Raffeala, recalls that they were given ₹5,000 by a Pakistani woman to reach safe haven from IS controlled territory. “After Rashid’s death we have been running only,” she says.
“Women are living together….we were running and walking. After he got killed it was difficult for us. I have seen bodies of women and children killed in airstrikes, wont that hurt us?” Raffeala says, adding that mostly confined to their homes she used to make pizzas and cake.
