On 23rd March, Assam Police detained IIT Guwahati student Tauseef Ali Farooqui for pledging allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) and declaring his intent to join the terror group via an open letter on the social media platform LinkedIn. When the letter was spotted, he was not found on the IIT campus and was arrested from Hajo later in the evening with the help of some locals. Now, it has come to light that Hindu Jagran Manch’s Kamrup district activists Tanke Deka and others caught him in Damdama, Hajo.
A video of the activists questioning Farooqui has gone viral on social media. The activists immediately handed over Farooqui to the police. The Hindu Jagran Manch workers and other locals spotted Farooqui because he was roaming in the area with an ISIS flag in hand.
In the video, the activists asked him if he supported ISIS. He said, “I believe only Allah has the right to rule. The government that we Hindus and Muslims have created here is wrong.” He then said he supports ISIS because they want to establish the rule of Allah.
When asked whether he supports ISIS terrorists attacking people with guns, he said that he supports it because ISIS wants to establish the rule of Allah while the police want to establish their own rule.
It can be seen that Tauseef was confronted inside a market complex in Damdama near Hajo, around 30 km from Guwahati.
Posting the video of the confrontation, RSS worker Gautam Chakrabarty urged the union govt and Assam govt to honour the Hindu Jagran Manch workers for their courage. “Their alertness and prompt action deserve recognition,” he said.
Tanke Deka also posted about the development on Facebook yesterday. He wrote, “IIT Guwahati student Tauseef Ali Farooqui is a member of ISIS. Today, with the help of the people in Hajo Dumdama, we am handed him over to Hajo police station. At first he called himself a resident of Delhi. What a terrible educated Muslim.”
Talking to the media about how they spotted Tauseef, Tanke Deka said that Tauseef was going towards Nalbari from Guwahati via Nalbari, and he had a blag Islamic flag in his hand. At Damdama chowk, he raised some Islamic slogans. As a result, the locals immediately confronted him, and he told them that he supports ISIS. Hearing this, some of the locals started assaulting him. Deka was nearby who reached the spot and rescued him from a probable lynching.
Talking about his conversion with Tauseef, Tanke Deka said that Tauseef is an educated Jihadi who is completely brainwashed by Islamist jihadi propaganda. Tauseef was also carrying two knives. Deka said that Tauseef definitely has links with ISIS and he is an educated jihadi terrorist. After giving him a few slaps, they handed him over to police, Deka added.
Tauseef Ali Farooqui arrested for pleading allegiance to ISIS
On 23rd March, Assam Police detained Tauseef Ali Farooqui, a youth who pledged allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS) via an open letter on the social media platform LinkedIn. Farooqui is a final-year biotechnology student at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati (IIT-G).
In the open letter on LinkedIn, Farooqui claimed that he had disassociated himself from the “Indian-Construct that includes the so-called Indian Constitution, its institutions and so on”. The letter read, “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)…”. He also sent the letter via mail to some people.
When the letter was spotted, it was found that Tauseef Ali Farooqui was missing from the IIT Guwahati campus. His phone was also switched off. The police issued a lookout notice against him, and a search was made at the airport.
However, later, he was located at Hajo, a town around 25 km from North Guwahati where IIT Guwahati is located, on Saturday evening. Farooqui hails from Okhla in New Delhi. His room in the hostel was searched, where some objectionable items have been found, including a back ISIS flag. When reporters asked Tauseef about the black flag in his room, he claimed it was a religious one.