@shammiwitness: Google yet to respond, Bengaluru cops to make second bid

Bengaluru, June 23: After filing a 37,000 page chargesheet, the case pertaining to Mehdi Masroor Biswas is stuck in a loop.

Biswas who was arrested by the Bengaluru police for posting pro ISIS content online is facing a host of charges under the Indian Penal Code and also the Unlawful Activities (Prevention). He used to tweet in the name of @shammiwitness.

The police have approached the court seeking permission to send a letter rogatory to the United States in a bid to seek assistance from Google and Facebook. The police feel that more information needs to be accessed and these companies can help.

No response from Google since 2015

It may be recalled that the police had written to Google in January 2015 seeking details of his accounts and also passwords. There had been no response which led to the delay in filing the chargesheet. The police have decided that they need to make one more attempt to access information.

Investigators feel that if this information is made available to them it would help strengthen the case. Mehdi has been arguing that he was merely re-tweeting material and this does not constitute an offence.

However the police say that there was one particular tweet in which he gives out information about an opening to reach Syria. This was intended at helping an operative reach the ISIS den and hence this constitutes an offence the police also say.

The police have with them his tweets. However, these tweets tell one part of the story and investigators believe that his email accounts could contain more information. However Biswas has been extremely fussy and non-cooperative with the investigators. When asked repeatedly for the account details he refused to part with information.

The police say that there are at least 15 email accounts that he had. With him refusing to share any information, we had requested Google in the month of January 2015 itself to share information with us.

OneIndia News