Cops find enough evidence to file charge sheet against Mehdi

The investigating team has completed one round of analysing all the tweets from the pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter account, @ShamiWitness, handled by Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who was arrested by the City police recently.

 They have found enough evidence to file a charge sheet against the accused, a highly placed police source said on Friday. “The tweets have been analysed once and we will be analysing them again to accumulate more details. It was a tedious job to analyse more than a lakh tweets. It was a big challenge to decipher the tweets which were in Arabic language and also, to understand the nuance of these tweets. We have also analysed the direct messages he had sent through Twitter and e-mail accounts. There is certain hardcore information found, which cannot be revealed in the interests of the investigation,” a senior officer monitoring the probe told Deccan Herald.

When asked about the charge sheet to be filed, the source mentioned, “There is enough evidence found during investigation, to file a charge sheet. We have time to file the charge sheet and everything is being compiled. Usually, the charge sheet should be filed within 180 days from the time of the arrest in terror-related cases. It is only 42 days since the day Mehdi was arrested, so there is ample time to go about. People following his Twitter account are also under scanner. Investigation is still in progress.” 

Mehdi Masroor Biswas was the handler of the most influential pro-IS Twitter account. He was arrested from his apartment located under Gangammanagudi police limits on December 13, 2014. Biswas is a native of West Bengal and had admitted to operating @ShamiWitness Twitter account for the last many years. His Twitter account had more than 17,000 followers, at the time of his arrest.