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| Iftikaar Ayub Khan's nephew left for Iraq from his home in Kalyan, India in May. He was last heard from in early June. Jesse Pesta/The Wall Street Journal |
Police say they are looking into whether the four went to Iraq to join a Sunni Muslim insurgent group. Relatives and friends of the men, who are in their early 20s, said militancy would be out of character, and said they believe the four went looking for jobs or to visit religious sites.
Despite the uncertainty about the men's intentions, there is widespread concern that stems in part from India's complex relationship with its Muslim minority and fears in India about Islamist terror.
For days, Indian newspapers have been running stories about these men and others who are alleged by unnamed law-enforcement and intelligence sources to have joined up with militants in Iraq and Syria.
In a sign of the national interest in the case, India's home minister met with relatives of the four friends from Kalyan on Friday. The family members were seeking government help to bring them home.
Ministry spokesman Kuldeep Singh Dhatwalia said on Sunday that it "has been brought to the government's notice" that the four friends "may have been motivated" to join radical forces.
Police said they have found no evidence of wrongdoing by the group. If they do find the young men are linked to the extremist group Islamic State, it would be "a paradigm shift" with important consequences for how India polices terrorism, said Deven Bharti, a senior official in the state police in Maharashtra, which is home to Mumbai and Kalyan.
Modern India was formed more than a half-century ago in a bloody "partition" involving a mass migration of Muslims to the new state of Pakistan and Hindus from Muslim-majority areas into India. Muslims make up about 13% of India's billion-plus population.
One concern about the four youths is the possibility that young people in India may be receiving, and responding to, international messages of militancy in new ways. That would be a departure because, as a general rule, Muslims in India have tended to focus on issues within South Asia—regional politics, for instance, or questions of discrimination, or the disputed territory of Kashmir on the Pakistan border—as opposed to conflicts such as Iraq's.
One notable change in recent years: International militant messages have begun reaching the ears of more youths within India. Here in Kalyan, police and locals noted that India's widening access to the Internet has given more people access to inflammatory videos and messages. For instance, spam messages sent on the popular smartphone service WhatsApp that ask recipients to "rise up" against attacks on Sunni or Shia Islam have become commonplace, they said.
"There has definitely been a change in Muslim youth being aware of issues concerning them globally," said Ravindra Tayde, a senior police inspector in the area where the four men live.
Relatives of the four young men expressed concerns over changes like these, while stressing their belief that the four men may have been misunderstood. "There has been a change in awareness of global issues affecting Islam," said Iftikaar Ayub Khan, an uncle of one of the four men, Arif Fayyaz Majeed, a 22-year-old engineering graduate.
However, Mr. Khan said, the four young men may have simply wanted to find good jobs and "get economically stable in life." In addition to Mr. Majeed, the group included two engineering students and one man who worked in a call center.
Mr. Majeed's father said his family is "frustrated with the Indian press reports accusing the boys of fighting in Iraq." The parents of the other three men couldn't be reached.
Sitting on a porch in a monsoon downpour after Friday prayers, a group of relatives and friends of Mr. Majeed's said he graduated from a respected private high school where he played on the cricket and soccer teams. Cricket "was his passion," said Shadab Shaikh, a cousin.
The four disappeared on May 24. The uncle, Mr. Khan, said Mr. Majeed on that evening, after playing cricket with friends, told his family he was "going for some work." When he didn't return home by the following evening, his family filed a missing-persons report. Within a few days, the families realized the four friends were all gone, he said.
Around May 28, the four called or sent texts to their families saying they were in Iraq and were fine. The travel agent who organized their trip said the four disappeared on the sixth day of a seven-day tour of religious sites, according to Mr. Khan.
The last contact came on June 7, when the four again indicated they were fine, according to the uncle and the police.
In Kalyan, the men were also volunteers with a local group, Islamic Guidance Centre, an organization that says it helps young Muslims engage in mainstream Indian society by, for instance, organizing field trips to old-age homes to chat with lonely residents.
Some Indian press reports have suggested that one of the IGC's volunteers, Adil Dolare, may have been a catalyst for the men's decision to go to Iraq. Mr. Dolare, an importer of dried fruits from Afghanistan, said that wasn't true.
In a sign of the tensions surrounding the case, Mr. Dolare says that within hours of his name appearing in the press, he lost business. Mr. Dolare—who is also trying to break into the field of exporting shoes to Kabul—said his Indian shipping agent sent him an email rejecting his footwear consignment, which it previously had agreed to carry. The email read in part: "Don't try to get in touch with us again." WSJ
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