Ehtisham Bilal, the 18-year-old student who went missing from Sharda University in Noida on October 28, has reportedly joined militant outfit Islamic State (IS)-Kashmir chapter. This was revealed after his picture and audio surfaced on the social media on Friday.
Police officials, who did not rule out the possibility, said they were verifying the authenticity of the content that appeared on the social media.
“We also saw the picture, but we are still verifying it,” a senior police official said.
A day ago, the teenager’s family, which lives in Khanyar, gathered at Srinagar’s Press Colony and appealed to Governor Satya Pal Malik to help them in tracing him. The parents of the boy have been shattered by his mysterious disappearance and have held a series of protests appealing to the authorities to find him.
In the picture, the boy is seen wearing black clothes and turban and his code name appears as Abu Muhammad Al-Inghamasi, where he pledges allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.
“This is a message to all who consider jihad as a way of fighting,” a voice is heard saying in the six-minute audio message.
“Our blood is not white. We will give you tears of blood. I was looking into the eyes of those ‘kufaar’ (non-Muslims) when they attacked me in groups like dogs. I felt I had delayed being part of jihad for long. But not anymore,” it says.
Ehtisham was pursuing BSc in radiology and imaging technology at Sharda University. His family said on October 4, he was beaten up by some students on the campus, which turned into a controversy after a video went viral.
The boy’s family refused to talk about the message released by the militant outfit.
