IS fighter from City left country on a ’business trip’

 

Bengaluru, 24 Nov 2015: Faiz Masood, one of the two Bengalureans who died fighting for the Islamic State (IS), hailed from an affluent family that is into furniture and decoration business.

 

The family that lives in a posh house in D’Costa Layout in Cook Town had not heard from Faiz since September 2013 after he left for Qatar on a ‘business trip.’ The 1986-born Faiz, a BBM graduate from Christ College, had called his family a day after he left for Qatar on September 21, 2013. 

 

When the jurisdictional Bharathinagar police visited Faiz’s family on Monday evening following media reports that he was killed while fighting for the IS in Syria, his family members claimed that they were not aware of his whereabouts. However, they claimed that they had been told by a few ‘agencies’ sometime ago that he had died, sources in the police told Deccan Herald.

 

Faiz’s father Masood Ali told the police that security and intelligence agencies had approached him in June 2015 seeking information about his son. Ali is said to have told the police: “We don’t know why he went to Qatar and what businesses he was doing there. We have no information about him as he is not in touch with us.”

 

 It is not known when Faiz was radicalised and the police believe that it must had happened much before he left the country. Faiz, one of Ali’s three sons, did his schooling at St Anthony Boys’ School and St Joseph’s Boys’ High School. He completed his PU education at Vidya Niketan before graduating from Christ College. Faiz looked after his father’s business establishment on St Mark’s Road. 

 

Faiz has two children, Abdul Faiz (5) and one-and-a-half-year-old Haya. Faiz was apparently unaware that his wife Seema Siddiqui was pregnant when he left for Qatar. The family which was living in Jayamahal Extension moved to Cooke Town on June 8, 2013. 

 

Architect’s son

Not much is known about Mohammed Umar Subhan, another Bengalurean who was in the IS and was killed in Syria. Umar’s father Mohammed Abdul Subhan, an architect, had an office in an old building on Hospital Road, opposite Sultan Shah Masjid in Shivajinagar. The office has, however, been locked for the last three years, building owner Deepak Kumar said.

 

In fact, Abdul Subhan himself has not been seen for many years. He was known to Deepak’s family who gave him the shop on rent some 60 years ago. “I had never seen his son or his wife. I used to bump into Abdul sometimes and say a casual hello. I had heard that his son was working in Middle East and involved in the underworld activities,” Deepak told Deccan Herald. 

 

Abdul disappeared soon after he was issued a notice for not paying rent or maintenance fees since some 15 years. “About two-and-a-half years ago when I asked him for maintenance charges, he lodged a complaint with Commercial Street police, accusing me of harassing him. The police, however, found out that he had not paid the rent and began questioning him. Since then, he has not been seen,” claimed Deepak.