Bengaluru: In a major breakthrough, Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the alleged handler of the most influential pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter account was arrested from an apartment here in the early hours on December 13 by the Bengaluru police. His cell phone and laptop were also seized during his arrest.
Though sources say that Mehdi did not have any direct link with Al Qaida or Islamic State group and nothing as yet suggests his involvement with any jihadi element. He appears to be a case of self-radicalisation.
Mehdi, an electrical engineer from Kolkata, had moved to Bengaluru in 2011. He has two sisters and his father is a retired employee of the West Bengal state Electricity Board. He had been employed with the multinational corporation as a marketing executive since 2012 at an annual salary of Rs. 5.3 lakh.
Police interrogation after Mehdi’s arrest
While in initial questioning he said that he mainly concentrated on Muslims living abroad as the Indian Muslims were incapable of Jihad. It is also learnt that more than 17,000 followers in his twitter account were English-Speakers from Europe.
Most of his tweets have been deleted and the account was shut down after the report surfaced. Even the police have not found any activity against India or anti-India tweets so far, also there is no evidence to prove that he had planned terror attack in India. He had no previous criminal record too.
Even though Mehdi had contacts with English speaking ISIS men on twitter, he did not reveal his true identity to them. Police added that Mehdi was not involved in any of the activity in propagating the ISIS agenda and he was just translating the Arabic tweets into English. He collected the data and videos of ISIS from cyberspace and then posted on the internet.
Police also said that Mehdi has not travelled outside the country neither he received any funds from ISIS.
The arrest comes after Bengaluru Police launched a manhunt for Mehdi after Britain’s Channel 4 News had aired the report regarding the country’s IT capital’s link with the Twitter account that is followed by foreign jihadis. It is alleged that Mehdi was handling the ISIS twitter account named @shamiwitness and his tweets were seen two million times each month, which made him most influential Islamic state twitter account.
Mehdi’s interview to UK Channel 4
In a brief interview to Channel 4 “Mehdi” had said, “I haven’t done anything wrong. I haven’t harmed anybody. I haven’t broken any law…I haven’t raised any war or any violence against the public of India. I haven’t waged war against any allies of India.”….I want to state clearly that I won’t resist arrest when the time comes. I don’t have any sort of weapons with me,” he had said in the two minute 12 second interview, which ended abruptly.
Besides, the UK Channel 4 report had quoted the Twitter account operator as saying that he had not joined IS jihadist ranks in Iraq and Syria because his family was financially dependent on him.
The @shamiwitness tweets contained jihadist propaganda as well as information for would-be recruits and messages praising fighters who have been killed as martyrs.
“My son has been framed by his enemies”
“I don’t believe it. I’m shocked. My son has been framed by his enemies or mine,” said Dr Mekail Biswas, who retired from the West Bengal State Electricity Board 10 years ago.
While speaking to sources Mehdi’s father said that we are from a religious family, but a liberal one while my son perform regular namaz, also our family believed in the equality of all faiths.
My son was a bright boy. A student of a local branch of Kendriya Vidyalaya, he always ranked within top three in his class. After getting his engineering degree from a local technical institute, he was recruited through a campus interview, his father added.
Karnataka’s links with global terror
However, this is not the first time that Karnataka has been linked with the global terror.
In 2007, London-based Kafeel Ahmed, a doctorate engineering student from the city, drove an explosive laden truck into Glasgow International Airport and died of injuries; he received in the attack.
Riaz and Iqbal, brothers from the coastal town of Bhatkal in Karnataka, found Indian Mujahidden, which is blamed for about 21 terror attacks across the country with both remaining elusive.
(Inputs from PTI and NDTV)
