The Bengaluru Police on Friday started an investigation into a British media report that the man behind a widely-followed pro-ISIS Twitter account is from the IT city Bengaluru. The British TV channel has identified the man as Mehdi, who is a city-based executive working for an Indian conglomerate.
Bengaluru Police Commissioner MN Reddi said: “We received information on this in the morning. We have asked the Crime Branch to look into the veracity of the report. Whatever action is to be taken, will be taken.
“Just as you have received a report, I have received it too. I confirm that there is a report. We have taken note of this information and our Crime Branch is on the job to look into the veracity and if so what needs to be done.”
According to British news broadcaster Channel 4, the man operating the account has until now been able to remain anonymous, avoiding questions about his motives and his central role in the Islamic State’s propaganda war. “But an investigation by Channel 4 has identified him as Mehdi and he is an executive in Bangalore working for an Indian conglomerate,” the report claimed.
“His tweets, written under the name Shami Witness, were viewed two million times each month, making him perhaps the most influential Islamic State Twitter account, with over 17,700 followers,” it said. The Twitter account @ShamiWitness now does not exist.
Replying to a question if the city police was in contact with central agencies like NIA and IB on this, Reddi said, “We are all in touch.”
Responding to another question, he said, “We often get inputs on the presence of sleeper cells, sometimes these reports are true, sometimes they turn out to be false. But we take all such inputs seriously.”
The British TV channel also claimed that the executive would have joined the Islamic State if his family had not been dependant on him. As per reports, the social networking account had also tweeted US aid worker Peter Kassig’s execution and other videos, moments after they appeared on the internet.
Mehdi, the channel reported, is also on Facebook and regularly shares “jokes, funny images, talks about super hero movies, posting pictures of pizza dinners with friends and Hawaiian parties at work.” There are also indications of his “Islamist ideology” in conversations about “libyan and Egyptian uprisings.”
Mehdi would post thousands of tweets from his Twitter account, using his mobile every month and also tweeted the video of the beheading of US aid worker Peter Kassig “within minutes of it being uploaded to the internet.”
He also tweeted in November that “May Allah guide, protect, strengthen and expand the Islamic State…
Islamic State brought peace, autonomy, zero corruption, low crime rate”. The channel also reported how the Twitter account would express happiness at the “deaths and rapes of Kurdish women fighters” on Twitter, but later said that these were “taken out of context”.
According to sources Indian Intelligence sleuths have arrived in Bengaluru and are looking into all angles to nail the handler. An officer on the condition of anonymity told The Pioneer that they were also in touch with British agencies. He also said many Indian sleeper cells were using social media to spread the jehadist ideology.