Patna, Aug. 2: A 29-year-old woman from Sitamarhi who was working in Kerala has been arrested from Delhi allegedly for trying to join the Islamic State.

Sources in Delhi police said Yasmin Ahmed was detained by immigration officials at Indira Gandhi International Airport on Sunday afternoon when she was on her way to board a flight to Afghanistan.

"We acted on the look-out notice issued by Kerala police and detained her at the airport. She was handed over to Delhi police and was later taken into custody by Kerala police," said a senior immigration official at IGI airport.

Yasmin, suspected to have links with the alleged recruitment of 21 youths from Kerala to the Islamic State, had reportedly created a scene at the airport and shouted at the immigration officials when she was detained. She was accompanied by her five-year-old son.

"Yasmin, a divorcee, was born and brought up in the Gulf where her parents are settled," said a Delhi police official.

Yasmin was married into a family in Moraul village in Sitamarhi district, close to the India-Nepal border. Two of her brothers - Kasim and Imran - are at present working in Saudi Arabia. The brothers worked as tailors in their native village Hanumanpur in Sitamarhi before they went abroad, the residents said. The house was found locked on Tuesday evening.

Kerala police official Sunil Babu, who was heading the team that took Yasmin to the southern state from Delhi, said she had been on the radar of the security agencies ever since the youths went missing between May and June this year. Babu is the deputy superintendent of police, Kanhangad, which is part of Kerala's Kasargode district where Yasmin worked as a teacher with Peace International, a Muslim organisation which runs schools across the southern state.

Police believe that this is where Yasmin came in contact with Abdul Rasheed, an engineer by profession who is suspected to be the kingpin of the IS recruitment drive.

Rasheed, from Udumbinthala village in Trikkaripur, was employed as purchase manager with Peace International. Intelligence sources told The Telegraph that Rasheed was instrumental in planning and executing the process by which these youths from Kerala's Kasargode and Palakkad districts fled the country between May and June this year, purportedly to join the IS.

Kerala DSP Babu said Yasmin was in touch with Rasheed even after he went missing. "She left Kerala about four months ago," he added.

Babu said the intelligence sleuths tracked a message sent to Yasmin by Rasheed asking her to come to Kabul in Afghanistan. According to the DSP, Yasmin was supposed to leave the country with the other 21 youths but she couldn't do so due to delay in documentation.

Yasmin was brought to Kochi yesterday and then taken to Kasargode where she was questioned and produced before a magistrate's court which remanded her to judicial custody. Unconfirmed reports say police had learnt from her that the missing Keralaites are somewhere in Tora Bora in Afghanistan.

Rasheed is married to Ayesha, a software engineer who had converted from Christianity. Born and brought up in Oman, Rasheed is the eldest son of Abdulla, a Kasargode resident who was in the Middle East for about 30 years. According to the family, Rasheed left home for Mumbai on May 28 with Ayesha and their little daughter Sara. The last time they contacted the family was on June 17. Later, the family got messages which said they were going, though it wasn't mentioned where to, and that they were safe.