Six months after arrest, Bengaluru police on Monday filed a charge-sheet against 24-year-old Mehdi Masroor Biswas, suspected handler of the pro-Islamic State twitter account @ShamiWitness.
Joint Commissioner of Police, M. Chandrashekhar said Mehdi was charged with eight sections of the Indian penal Code (IPC) including unlawful activities, conspiracy, supporting a terrorist organisation, waging war against the State, sedition and promoting enmity. The charge-sheet, containing 36,986 pages, was submitted to the Court on Monday.
He was charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation through his Twitter account, he said adding that the police have recovered 1,22,000 Twitter messages with over 18,000 followers.
The 24-year-old hails from the city and was an employee of ITC which is headquartered in Bengaluru. The police picked him up from his apartment in Jalahalli in December 2014.
The charge-sheet containing all the tweets and the list of followers he was communicating with to glorify and spread messages to wage war along with ISIS against Syria and Iraq.
Many of his tweets have also been found to be promoting and supporting the terrorist activities in the Jammu and Kashmir, Mr. Chandrashekhar said.
“We could not find any one personally whom Mehdi was in touch, but we have ample proof that he had contacts with many fighters in Syria,” he added.
