BENGALURU: The city police, after questioning ISIS sympathiser Mehdi Masroor Biswas for over 20 days, has revealed that he was in touch with one of the youths from Maharashtra, who had joined the terror group last year.
City Police Commissioner M N Reddi said on Friday, “We scoured through over 12,000 sirect messages sent by Mehdi apart from over 1.3 lakh tweets. We found that he had been in touch with one of the Indians who had joined ISIS, and had been advising him and offering assistance.”
He however did not elaborate on the kind of assistance that was provided.
Reddi said the contact was possibly one of the three Kalyan youths who was still on the frontlines with ISIS and said that because the Twitter handles did not give their original names, it was difficult to ascertain exactly who Mehdi was talking to. Mehdi will be in judicial custody till January 16.
According to Reddi, the investigation into Mehdi’s links with ISIS and his tweets was uncommon to other criminal investigations, especially with regard to the data that they had to go through.
Investigation has provided sufficient evidence about the manner and Mehdi’s propaganda of ISIS.
“Investigating is still progressing into the 24,000 accounts that were linked to Mehdi’s and the people who operated them, especially with regard to whether there were any other indians. I am unable to answer questions with regard to ISIS recruitments, especially since the action may have taken place in another country,” Reddi said.
Mehdi was highly radicalised, but learnt most of what he knew through the Internet, which he then internalised.
He lied about his time zone, making it look like he was someone from West Asia. Therefore, Mehdi also never commented about matters in India and only talked about matters in the Levantine, Reddi said.