Bengaluru police charge sheet man behind pro-IS twitter posts

Police in Bengaluru filed 36,986 pages-long charge sheet against an engineer accused of operating a pro-Islamic State Twitter account that pumped out a stream of updates on the violent group's military campaign. The engineer, identified as Mehdi Masoor Biswas, who used to run the Twitter handle at ShamiWitness from his one-room apartment in Bengaluru, was arrested by the police six months ago in December last year. Bengaluru's Joint Commissioner of Police, M. Chandra Sekar said on the basis of the tweets and replies Biswas got from other handles, the police was sure he was in touch with some fighters fighting in the Syria and Levant region. Sekar added that 122,000 messages were recovered from Biswas' account and he had approximately 18,000 followers. His interrogation has indicated that his activities were limited to posting and reposting of pro-ISIS material on his Twitter account and other social media sites. Mehdi has denied recruiting volunteers. Sekar added that Biswas was also supporting secessionist activities in northern state of Jammu and Kashmir and though Biswas was not supporting any particular group but was supporting activities which are pre-judicial to the sovereignty and security of this nation.