Press Trust Of India
Bangalore, Dec 14: A senior police officer has received a threat in connection with the arrest of Mehdi Masroor Biswas, the alleged handler of the most influential pro-Islamic State (IS) Twitter account, even as the latter was remanded to five-day police custody.
‘‘Bangalore CCB Police have got five days’ remand of Mehdi Masroor Biswas. He was presented before the magistrate last night,’’ DCP-crime Abhishek Goyal said Sunday. After Biswas was picked up Saturday, Goyal received a threat message in reply to his tweet about the arrest of the 24-year-old engineer working as ‘‘manufacturing executive’’ with ITC Foods in Bangalore from his one-room apartment here.
‘‘@goyal_abhei we will not leave our brothers in your hand Revenge is coming wait for our reaction,’’ reads a reply from twitter handle@abouanfal6.
Responding to the threat, Goyal said he is not taking it much seriously.
‘‘Personally I’m not taking the threat much seriously….taking it in my stride and not much alarmed,’’ he said.
On the basis of ‘‘credible’’ intelligence inputs received on the presence of ISIS Twitter Ideologue @ShamiWitness in Bangalore, the city police chief had formed a special team, which closed in on Biswas and arrested him. Police had launched a manhunt for Mehdi after Britain’s Channel 4 News had aired the report regarding the country’s IT capital’s link with the Twitter account that is followed by foreign jihadis.