Hyderabadi youths who allegedly wanted to join IS questioned

The Hyderabad police today began questioning of three city-based students picked up from Nagpur airport yesterday while on the way to Srinagar to join "jihadi terror groups" like ISIS. "They are being questioned in front of their parents," a senior official of intelligence wing of Telangana police told PTI. The three youths, cousins in their 20s, were nabbed in a joint operation by Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad and Telangana police when they were about to board a flight to Srinagar after arriving in Nagpur from Hyderabad. Earlier, their parents had registered missing cases after the trio left without telling anyone about their plans. The officer said that investigators would be analysing contents of a cell phone recovered from them. "We are going to replace them (sections applied in missing person cases) with appropriate sections if needed, as it all depends on the outcome of investigation. We need to analyse the cell phone and it will take some more time," the officer said. One of them would be let off after mere counselling as his role didn't look to be very serious, he said. The other two had been counselled by the police last year after they were caught while allegedly planning to join ISIS. They were under watch ever since. Police had claimed yesterday that they had "jihadi kind of mindset". "The trio wanted to reach Srinagar from where they wanted to explore joining some terror organisation. They did not have any well-prepared plan," the police had said