Bengaluru, Dec 13: The two day
ordeal came to an end with the Bangalore police netting Mehdi Masroor Biswas,
who was running the @shammiwitness account which is sympathetic to the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
There
are two unknown aspects to this entire story and they include how he had been
trapped and secondly how the man running a handle for a dreaded outfit broke
down in front of the police.
The
twitter handle @shammiwitness was being run since the year 2011 November. It is
a well known fact that this handle was one of the most influential ones for the
ISIS as there was a tweeting frequency of nearly 80 tweets per day. He had
spoken to a foreign media in the month of January 2014, but had not revealed
his identity.
After
the news broke yesterday, a special team of the Bangalore police was formed.
There was a team of the central intelligence bureau also present in Bangalore.
They knew by afternoon yesterday about the location details of Masroor.
They
needed to get the confirmation and went about tracking his details which they
found to West Bengal. They spoke with his parents who said that he is in
Bangalore and they confirmed the address. Moreover all the details that they
had gathered regarding Masroor had matched with the what the parents had told
them.
While
all this was going on, a team of the police camped out his house in Jalahalli
Bangalore and also got in touch with his employees at ITC as well. ITC
immediately provided them with the details and this ensured that the police got
further verification of the man.
The
police could have got him immediately, but were aware that they had him in
check and he could not move out of the city. Moreover they were trying to find
out if he would get in touch with anyone and this police sought to do only to
find out if there was some kind of a network he was part of. However once they
were doubly sure that he had no contact in Bangalore, they went up to his house
and rounded him up. The entire night was questioned at his place.
When
the police entered his house, he threw his hands up and said that he is
unarmed. He immediately said, “ please don’t hurt me, I have done nothing. I am
ready to surrender and cooperate. He broke down very badly as the tension that
was catching up to him ever since his cover was blown got to him.”
A
police officer informed that he was extremely soft when he spoke. He denied
everything at first. He continued to deny information till 1 AM. He told the
police that his account were hacked. However there was too much proof with the
police and they countered him with over 200 questions linking to blog, facebook
and twitter handle.
However
after an hour or so he cracked and confessed to being @shammiwitness.
The
journalists from Channel 4 began to track him since the past six months, he was
getting calls praising him for his work. They repeatedly told him that he was
doing very good work and he should join the ISIS in Syria. This is when he told
them that he was working in Bangalore and had to earn in order to support his
family. His cover had been blown. (Source- www.newsroompost.com)
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