17 youths linked with ‘ISI agent’ vanish

A senior ATS official told The Indian Express that the IB had forwarded them the details of 17 youths who had stayed in two different hotels in Charbagh area of Lucknow on May 31. These youths were waiting for Furqan and were to fly to Kuwait along with him from Lucknow.

He said the IB had got information the youths were going to Kuwait on job visas,but their conduct was suspicious. All 17 youths received phone calls from four different locations and numbers in Mumbai within two hours of IB catching Furqan and handing him over to the Uttarakhand police late in the evening on June 1. The youths then checked out of the hotels and have been missing since then.

The ATS team visited a travel agency in Kushinagar – Khushbu Travels – which had arranged the job visas for the youths,and got the youths’ addresses. As many as 13 of them belong to Gorakhpur,Deoria and Kushinagar districts in eastern UP while four are from other districts of western UP.

Sources said the IB had found that all four cell phone numbers from where the calls were given to the youths in Mumbai had gone silent. The numbers were taken in the name of a travel agency which does not exist.

Furqan belongs to Shahpeer Gate area of Meerut district. At the time of his arrest,he was carrying maps of military areas of Meerut and Bikaner.

The families of these youths told the ATS team that they had left their houses on May 29 and had told the family members that they would leave for Kuwait from Lucknow on June 2.

The police also inquired about their past,but found nothing objectionable. Most of them come from lower-middle class families and had received only school education.