The suspect, Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who was interested in developments across the Muslim world since a decade, confesses to operating the controversial twitter account
Bengaluru: An Indian business executive, named as a supporter and publicist of the Islamic State (IS) terror group, was arrested from his rented house early on Saturday, a police official said.
Mehdi Masroor Biswas. Pic/PTI
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“Terror suspect Mehdi Masroor Biswas, 24, was picked from his one-room rented house in the northeast suburbs and sent to custody after preliminary interrogation,” Karnataka Director General of Police (DGP) Lal Rokhuma Pachau explained.
The arrest came two days after a London-based channel reported that Mehdi was part of the IS terror group’s Twitter activities and was regularly tweeting from the city under the handle @ShamiWitness.
“Mehdi was found asleep in his apartment when our probe team knocked on his door in the early hours. He was detained, interrogated and arrested. He confessed to being a radical Islamicist,” Pachau said.
Police registered a case against Mehdi under various Sections of the Indian Penal Code, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Information Technology (IT) Act.
Two mobiles, one laptop, incriminating documents, religious literature, pictures and CDs were seized from his house during the raid. Biswas, who hails from Gopalpur town in West Bengal’s Nadia district, is employed as a business executive in an Indian multinational firm. His parents and two elder sisters live in Gopalpur.
Mehdi was posted in Bengaluru in 2012 and was confirmed in his job in March this year. He earned a salary of R5.3 lakh per annum. “Since a decade, Mehdi was interested in developments across the Muslim world, spanning West Asia and North Africa.
He used an Internet account with 60 GB capacity to download news, views, videos and pictures and browse social media sites such as Facebook, blogs, news portals and used e-mail extensively,” Pachau said.
Mehdi’s Twitter handle was shut a day after the news channel unmasked his identity and the terror activities he was carrying out in the virtual world after office hours. Mehdi confessed to operating @ShamiWitness Twitter account since 2003.
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