Youth has confessed to operating pro-IS Twitter account: Karnataka DGP

Karnataka Director General of Police (DGP) L. Pachau on Saturday said a 24-year -old youth hailing from West Bengal has confessed to operating a pro- Islamic State (IS) Twitter account.

"Mehdi Masroor Biswas has confessed to the fact that he was operating a Shami witness twitter account for the last many years. FIR has been registered against Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who has been arrested," Pachau told a press conference here.

"During the day he worked in office and he became active on internet late at night," he said, adding that Biswas had developed interest in the Levant region consisting of countries Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Gaza strip, Egypt and Libya.

Giving details about the alleged sympathizer of ISIS, Pachau said, "He is basically from West Bengal and he is working as a manufacturing executive in Bangalore since 2012 ...he is an engineer by qualification, his parents and two elder sisters live in West Bengal. His father is a retired employee of West Bengal State Electricity Board."

Pachau said Mehdi had more than 17,000 followers on Twitter and used to "ferociously" tweet by aggregating information and closely watching developments of the region.

An investigation by Britain's Channel 4 News had stated that the @ShamiWitness account, which reportedly had a massive 17,700 followers, was being run by an executive based in Bangalore.

The report also claimed that the executive was ready to join the Islamic State himself 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 first appeared on the internet.