BJD calls for urgent steps to insulate youth from joining jihadist groups like Iraq's ISIS'

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader Jay Panda on Tuesday expressed his concern over youths from Maharashtra visiting Iraq to join the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) , and sought urgent steps for insulating the latter from involving themselves in jihadist activities.

"This is a very serious matter. Youths from India getting involved in jihadist activities anywhere in the world should be of concern to us. We have seen in the past in other countries like Pakistan where their youth got involved in jihadist activities, later on they came back and they started hunting their own country. We have to nip this problem in the bud and tackle it right away," Panda said.

The Maharashtra Government is in touch with the central government over the disappearance of four Muslim youth from Kalyan town who are suspected to have joined ISIS jehadis in Iraq.

The police in Maharashtra are probing the four separate missing complaints filed by the parents of the youth, identified as Arif Fayyaz Majeed, Aman Naik Tandel, Shaheed Farooqui Tanki and Fahad Tanvir Sheikh.

All are educated, are in their mid-20s and cited various reasons, including employment options, for going to Iraq before their families lost all contact with them.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been displaced in the fighting between the government troops and Sunni militants that broke out on June 10.

Sunni militant outfit, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ( ISIS), now called Islamic State (IS) declared last month that it is establishing a new caliphate, or an Islamic state, on the territories it controls in Iraq and Syria.