Pro-IS voice behind @ShamiWitness Mehdi Biswas sent to five-day police custody

Bengaluru: A local court on Sunday sent pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter handler Mehdi Masroor Biswas to five day police custody for interrogation, a police official said. “We had produced Mehdi before the sessions court, which remanded him to five day police custody till Dec 18 for interrogation by our investigation team on his unlawful activities,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Abhishek Goyal told IANS here. Biswas was arrested early Saturday following a British news channel Dec 11 unmasking the city-based 24-year-old executive as a supporter of IS through social media and Twitter handle @ShamiWitness. “Preliminary investigation reveals that Mehdi Biswas is a propagandist of IS ideology and has been instrumental in influencing minds against our friendly countries against whom the terror group is at war,” Additional Director General of Police Hemant Nimbalkar told reporters later. [caption id=“attachment_1848595” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Mehdi Biswas in the small photo and his apartment complex in Bengaluru. PTI Photo.[/caption] Police registered a case against Biswas under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act. “We are quizzing him on his virtual and actual relations with the terror group and checking his antecedents, including mobile calls, e-mails, chat sessions and postings in the social media like Facebook, blogs and Twitter,” Nimbalkar said. A police team raided Biswas’ one-room apartment in the northern suburb early Saturday and apart from arresting him, seized two mobiles, one laptop, incriminating documents, religious literature, pictures, pen drivers and compact discs (CDs) from the premises. “We are also probing if Biswas or the terror group has any local presence in the form of sleeper cells or networks,” Nimbalkar added. Biswas, who hails from Gopalpur town in West Bengal’s Nadia district, is employed in the foods division of the Kolkata-based ITC Ltd in Bengaluru. He admitted to the probe team that he had been operating the Twitter account after he got interested in the developments of the Middle Eastern region. He has about 17,000 Twitter followers and used to aggressively tweet by collecting information on regional developments. IANS