Asiya Andrabi says she had visited Hyderabad in December 2014, but did not meet or offer help to any Hyderabadi youth to join jihadi groups.
Separatist women's group leader Asiya Andrabi, the chief of Dukhtaran-e-Millat says she had visited Hyderabad in December 2014, but did not meet or offer help to any Hyderabadi youth to join jihadi groups.
"I was there to offer condolences after the death of SIMI leader Salahuddin,'' she told the media in Srinagar today.
Salahuddin is the maternal uncle of three college students -- Abdullah Basith, Omer Farooq and Maaz Hasan -- arrested at Nagpur airport on Saturday.
Police said they confessed to planning to take a flight to Srinagar to meet Ms Andrabi, take her help to cross the border and join a Jihadi group - the ISIS, ISIL, Al Qaeda or Hizbul Mujahideen.
Abdullah Basith, Omer Farooq and Maaz Hasan were arrested just before they were to board a flight to Srinagar.
"The students have never met her. But we need to know whether she visited Hyderabad,'' said Telangana DGP Anurag Sharma.
Asked if the police will question Ms Andrabi in course of the investigation, Mr Sharma said "Let us investigate the matter first and then only I will be able to give an answer."
The police say the influence of jihadi propaganda on social and digital media has become a huge challenge.
"What is heartening is that we were able to stop 21 men, who were subsequently put through deradicalisation and counselling programme, which involved their families as well," Mr Sharma said.
Two of the students were among the four persons stopped in Kolkata last month when they had reportedly planned to cross the border into Bangladesh.
Despite deradicalisation and counselling sessions, they had persisted with extremist intentions. One of them, Abdullah Basith, was rusticated from the engineering college where he was pursuing his third year in computer science. But he still managed to influence his cousins and persuade them to leave home, the police said.
Though Union home minister Rajnath Singh said since Indian families are not with extremist groups, ISIS is not a big threat to India, the home ministry has asked the police not to take a lenient view of the students' activities.