To decipher the virtual world of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who had tweeted over a lakh times for the International terrorist outfit IS and was arrested, the Bengaluru Police is now seeking the assistance of an IT firm. According to police, they are taking help of a third party to unmask the tweets of Mehdi who is alleged handler of pro-Islamic State (IS). He has tweeted over 1.2 lakh times and police find this a massive task to decipher his intentions.
“Investigations are going on in the Mehdi case. Different teams are examining this case in various dimensions and we have taken third party technical assistance,” City Police Commissioner MN Reddi told reporters in Bengaluru. The unmasking of Biswas has become a major task for the investigators and an IT firm will be engaged to decipher the tweets which are a crucial evidence to prove his involvement with IS.
Biswas was arrested from a rented one-room apartment here on December 13 by the city police after Britain’s Channel 4 News aired the report on the presence of ISIS Twitter Ideologue @ShamiWitness. The Police Commissioner said, “Twitter company won’t give analytical support, they give data; they have rudimentary analytical tools, whereas third party analysts have developed advanced tools to analyse big data in the form of tens of thousands of tweets.
“To analyse that we have taken third party help; even today there were a few discussions about it, in my opinion within the next few days there is possibility that we will have complete information,” he added. Reddi said, “This is a different type of case; the offence in this case is of a different nature, information is also of different nature and the way in which we will have to analyse this information is also different. So we may take some more time.”
The investigators are now looking into all aspects which include his connections with the real world. A police officer on the condition of anonymity said that Mehdi was fluent in Arabic and certainly has connections with the real world. They are also assessing the possibility of Mehdi getting funds from sources working for IS. The unmasking of Mehdi has become a major challenge for the police who are getting equipped with sophisticated tools to know his real intentions.