Once under ISIS influence, men in Maha make a new beginning

Jamil Ansari (name changed) runs a mobile phone repair shop in Maharashtra's Beed district. But, nobody would imagine that only two years ago, he was on the verge of joining the dreaded terror outfit ISIS by travelling to Iraq, thousands of kilometres away.

Thanks to an initiative of the Maharashtra Anti- Terrorism Squad (ATS), Ansari changed his mind and underwent an employment training programme after escaping clutches of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria's (ISIS) online 'recruiters' who had almost radicalised him.

He is not the only one. There are many such young men in Maharashtra, mainly in the industrially backward Marathwada region, who had once fallen victim to ISIS' propaganda but are now leading a normal life with the help of the employment training programme, a senior ATS official told PTI.

Ansari, a 35-year-old graduate, lost his job as a salesman in 2016 and began spending a lot of time surfing online, where he came in contact with some ISIS sympathisers .