Though Mehdi Masroor Biswas in his interview to Channel 4, claimed that he wanted to be there with the IS fighters at the frontline, a senior official who interrogated him said that he was not excited by being a mere foot soldier but aimed high — to be an ideologue high up in the value chain of the movement. “He achieved it with his virtual identity as @ShamiWitness and was basking in its glory,” the officer said.
The official described him to be extremely radicalised dreaming of a religious-political system in the world and believed that it would bring peace. He was extremely computer savvy. In fact Mehdi was working on his laptop when the police reached his house. He had a 60GB Internet connection and had large data on Islam, the IS and the region on his laptop.
Police Commissioner M.N. Reddi said that he took great care not to mix his real-life identity with his virtual one. He said while he lived a normal life during the day he was tweeting ferociously during the night.
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Bespectacled Mehdi, with a week-old stubble had become a bundle of nerves in the last two days after his interview with Channel 4, police said. A senior official said that he initially denied he was the handler of the twitter account and claimed his e-mail id was hacked, but he soon came clean. A senior police official said that Mehdi “probably did not understand the import of his crime.”