Plea to bring back women in custody in Kabul: HC asks for Centre's response

Kochi: Nimisha, who was taken to Afghanistan by alleged IS militant recruits from Kerala is at the centre of a debate whether she should be allowed to return to her native state Kerala.

Bindu, Nimisha's mother filed a petition in Kerala High Court pleading that the Centre arrange for her repatriation to India.

On Monday, the High Court sought the Centre's response to Bindhu's petition The case has been posted for hearing after two weeks. As per reports, Nimisha with her kid is in a Kabul jail, caught there for being an IS sympathiser.

The four Keralite women, as per reports travelled to Nangarhar in Afghanistan in the years 2016-18 with their husbands but the men were killed in different attacks in Afghanistan. In 2019 the women, accompanied by their children were interviewed by Indian security agencies in Kabul in December 2019, a month after their surrender.

Although security agencies did not state an official position about their repatriation, indications showed no official inclination to bring them back.

Bindhu's plea in the petition is that the Centre bring Nimisha back to India, as the Constitution grants citizens certain rights to the individuals which the Centre is bound to guarantee.

Bindhu's petition came in the lights of a recent newspaper report that the government of India, though cognizant of Nimisha's being alive in Kabul, is averse to bringing her, and three other ladies reported to be with her, back to India, due to security concerns, and for not allowing a terror suspect back into the county.

But Bindhu argued that the government could bring them back under custody and try her as per the lasw of the land. She also pointed out that all the four women are widows now withchildren, Nimisha's daughter being four years old.

The four women lodged in a jail in Kabul include Soniya, Merin, Nimisha and Raheela, all Keralites.

Reports of Keralites joining IS had surfaced after the Kerala government contacted central agencies -- IB, NIA, RAW in 2016 to confirm whether reports about 19 missing people, and whether they had joined IS from the state were true.

Some of those who had joined IS were reportedly killed, according to their relatives, who got information about it and the husbands of these Kerala ladies were among those who have been killed.

It was in 2016 that Bindhu, a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, approached Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan seeking his help to locate her daughter who had gone missing.

But later it transpired that Nimisha has got married to her friend Eeza, a Christian who had converted to Islam. Later news came about her having left for Afghanistan. The last contact between her and her mother was in November 2019.

On April 27, Ahmad Zia Saraj, the head of the National Directorate of Security told reporters in Kabul that 408 members of the Islamic State from 13 countries are lodged in Afghanistan prisons, and Afghan authorities were in touch with 13 countries regarding their deportation.