Mehdi Biswas case: Dissatisfied over cooperation, police summons Twitter India marketing head

BENGALURU: The Bengaluru Police has summoned Twitter Inc’s India market head on Monday, saying it was dissatisfied with the cooperation extended by the social networking site into the probe on Islamic State (IS) propaganda handle @ShamiWitness that operated from the city.

“We asked for certain information five days ago, but we are not happy with the way Twitter officials have responded. So we have issued a notice, asking the company’s India market head to appear before us before 5 pm on Monday,” DCP (Crime) Abhishek Goyal told ET.

On Saturday, cops had nabbed Mehdi Masroor Biswas who was employed with ITC in Bengaluru after a UK channel identified him as the person operating the @ShamiWitness handle, highly popular among IS militants and sympathisers worldwide. Many Twitter followers of @ ShamiWitness account are under the radar of the Bengaluru police, who are “intensely” interrogating Biswas.

The Islamic State – internationally also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – is a terrorist organisation that controls parts of Iraq and Syria at the moment and aims to establish a world-wide caliphate.

“We cannot comment any further on the matter than we already have,” a Twitter spokesperson replied to an ET email regarding the Bengaluru Police summons. On Saturday, Twitter had said that the company does not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons and that Twitter did not proactively monitor content on the platform.

On Sunday evening, police reactivated the Twitter handle, which was deleted Thursday last, to access recent posts made by Biswas. “I just saved my tweets and friends’ replies (the whole conversation!)” was the first tweet police generated. Investigating agencies used a free online service to download as many as 3,200 tweets.