The Bengaluru Police’s Central Crime Branch is now concentrating on those accounts with which Mehdi Masroor Biswas, handler of Twitter handle @ShamiWitness, was communicating through private Direct Messages (DMs).
@ShamiWitness had over 17,000 followers when the police arrested Mehdi after he identified himself in an interview to Channel 4.
But, sources said, police are focusing on 14,000-plus DMs obtained from Twitter India, a collection of which they submitted to the court on Thursday, terming them ‘incriminating’. A senior officer said these messages are yet to be analysed.
Sources say that the sleuths have identified more than 50 Twitter accounts that Mehdi was corresponding with through DMs. The identity of most accounts is not clear, posing a serious challenge to the city police.
Police have now brought in a cyber tracking expert, who reportedly played a role in unmasking Mehdi, to help them identify the persons behind these anonymous accounts.
Meanwhile, sources said that Mehdi still claims that he is unable to remember the passwords to the three email accounts he holds, apart from elsaltador@gmail.com. A senior official said that Mehdi is being given a long rope to reveal all the information he has. If he does not co-operate, they had no option but to seek the help of the service provider to access the contents of his email accounts.
