Relatives of Arif Fayyaz Majeed meet Home Minister Rajnath Singh. (Source: IE photo: Deepak Joshi)
Summary
Arif, an engineering student, was one of four men from Thane who went missing from their homes in May.
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Arif Fayyaz Majeed, one of the four young men from Kalyan who were believed to have joined Sunni insurgents in Iraq, is reported to have been killed in the fighting.
Arif, an engineering student, was one of four men from Thane who went missing from their homes in May. Arif's family — along with the families of the other three men, Fahad Tanvir Sheikh, Aman Naim Tandel and Shaheen Farooqi Tanki — went to the police some days after they disappeared.
The Indian Express first reported the disappearances on July 14. Iftikhar Khan, an uncle of Fahad Sheikh, said the news of Arif's death in Iraq was conveyed by Shaheen Farooqi Tanki, who called his family in Thane on Tuesday night.
"Shaheen said that he had made inquiries about Arif's whereabouts and well being, and learned that he had died. Shaheen did not have any more details. There has not been any official confirmation as yet from any of the investigating agencies," Iftikhar Khan said.
The four families live in the same Dudh Naka-Govindwadi area of Kalyan (West). The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad had picked up laptops and pendrives from the youths' homes on the evening of July 14. Late on July 18 evening, the father of Arif Majeed, Ejaz Badruddin Majeed, had met Home Minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi, and handed him a letter, reportedly seeking action against the people who had radicalised his son and persuaded him to join the jihadis in the Middle East.
Before leaving home, Arif had left behind a letter saying "fighting has been enjoined upon you", and telling his mother that the "angel of death" will ask him why he didn't migrate to "Allah's land". In the letter, the son told his family, "May we all meet in Paradise."
Arif, Fahad, Aman and Shaheen were all suspected to have joined the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the brutal Sunni extremist army that now calls itself Islamic State (IS).
Police sources told The Indian Express that the four men flew to Baghdad on May 23 as part of a group of 22 pilgrims intending to visit religious shrines in Iraq. Arif called his family from Baghdad on May 24, apologising for having left without telling them. He claimed he had travelled in the hope of finding a job there. Then, he phoned again on May 25, this time to reassure his family he was well.
Late that evening, other pilgrims on the trip told investigators, the four Kalyan men hired a taxi to Fallujah, a city west of Baghdad that has emerged as the epicentre of Iraq's lethal insurgency. Then, the men went silent. Iraqi intelligence officials say Arif Majeed's cellphone connected to continued…
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