Mehdi Masroor Biswas, owner of Pro-ISIS Twitter handle @ShamiWitness, arrested.

On the basis of credible intelligence inputs received by Bengaluru City Police regarding the presence of ISIS Twitter Ideologue @ShamiWitness in Bengaluru city, Sh M N Reddi, IPS, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru, formed a special team of CCB Police officers under the leadership of Sh Hemant Nimbalkar Jt CP Crime and Sh Abhishek Goyal DCP Crime. This team, working in co-ordinations with Internal Security Division of Karnataka apprehended 24 year old Mehdi Masroor Biswas from his one room rented apartment today during the early hours of morning.

Mehdi is from West Bengal and is working as a Manufacturing Executive in Bangalore since 2012 and earning an annual package of 5.3 lacs/annum with a MNC. He is an engineer by qualification. His parents and two elder sisters live in West Bengal. His father is a retired employee of West Bengal State Electricity Board.

He has confessed to the fact that he was operating @ShamiWitness Twitter account for the last many years and that he has been interested in the developments of Levantine region consisting of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza strip, Egypt and Libya etc. from 2003 onwards.

Mehdi, now in police custody, used to work in his office during the day and become active on internet late into the nights. He took 60GB monthly internet connection and used to read all breaking news websites related to ISIS/ISIL. He had a following of more than 17000 twitter users and used to ferociously tweet by aggregating information and closely watching the developments of this region. He was particularly close to the English speaking terrorists of ISIS and became a source of incitement and information for the new recruits trying to join ISIS/ISIL. Through his social media propaganda he abetted ISIL in its agenda to wage war against the Asiatic powers.

Being very careful while concealing his true identity, he was confident that it will never get revealed. However, his identity was exposed by Channel 4 and inputs were passed on to Indian agencies. FIR has been registered against Mehdi Masroor Biswas under various provisions of IPC, UAP Act & IT Act 2000 & investigation is being carried on by CCB led by DCP Crime. Bengaluru police is working in coordination with various security agencies in this case.