Recruitment of women cadre for jihad?

Girl's 'disappearance' from Mangalore raises terror fears
TIMES OF INDIA 20 Jan 2009, 0409 hrs IST, Ananthakrishnan G, TNN


THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Intelligence agencies have begun a probe into the mysterious disappearance of a student of a Mangalore nursing college and her arrival at an Islamic seminary in Kerala's Kozhikode.

The incident assumes significance following reports that Pakistan's ISI has been giving training to women for jihad. Intelligence sleuths say four people, including two from Kerala, have been involved in the recruitment of women cadre for jihad, especially after 26/11.

With Mangalore's links with terror modules coming out in the open, intelligence agencies suspect there may be a racket operating in the region to woo women. SIMI is believed to have established a women's wing in Kerala.

The nursing student, in her early 20s, went missing from the college about 45 days ago. Later, she informed her parents in Kerala she was going to study Islam in a Kozhikode seminary, family sources said. The parents, with the help of police, contacted the seminary in Kozhikode. They met their daughter in the seminary and asked her to return home, but she said she would come home on January 14 after finishing studies. But when the parents again went there on January 12 to bring her back, they were told that she had left the place about a week back.

The same seminary was in the news as it was here that Varghese Joseph alias Mohd Yasin one of the four terrorists from Kerala killed in an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in October 2008 was converted from Christianity into Islam. At least 40 people 32 Hindus and eight Christians were converted here in December 2008 alone, intelligence sources said.

Family sources said the student contacted her mother over the phone on Sunday, but there was no information about her whereabouts. Police, however, said the student was in love with a Muslim man and wanted to marry him.