@shammiwitness case becomes weak as cops await Google response

Bengaluru, Nov 23: The probe against Mehdi Masroor Biswas alias @shammiwitness who was propagating for the ISIS is proving to be harder than one may have expected.

With Biswas refusing to share details of his email account passwords with the Bengaluru police, the investigating agency is finding it hard to file an additional chargesheet.

The Bengaluru police had written to Google in the month of January 2015 seeking details of his accounts and passwords, but have so far not received any response.

We are following it up with Google and will request them once again to share the details, the Bengaluru police say.

In the month of December 2014, Mehdi Masroor Biswas was arrested by the Bengaluru police after it was found that he was handling the pro-ISIS account @ShamiWitness.

An engineer working as "manufacturing executive" with a Bengaluru-based multinational company for an annual package of Rs 5.3 lakh, he became "a source of incitement and information" for the new ISIS recruits, the police had claimed.

The all important email accounts:

So far what the police has found are his tweets. The tweets that he sent out from his account @shammiwitness is all part of the chargesheet that the police have filed against him.

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. He either would say, " I do not know," or "I do not remember," or " I will not give it."

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 itself to share information with us.

However, we have not heard from them as yet, the officer said. These email accounts are extremely important as we need to file an additional chargesheet.

For the police the case may just get weaker if they do not get access to the email accounts. They are aware that there is incriminating evidence in those mails, but without the assistance of Google, they are unable to access the accounts.

The police are likely to take this issue up with Google once again and seek information. If the additional chargesheet is weak and has no details, then it becomes a case for Biswas to seek bail.

The Bengaluru police have had such trouble in the past as well. This was relating to the case of Riazuddin Nazir, a Hyderabad based youth who had plotted attacks in North Karnataka and Goa.

The police had sought information relating to his accounts, but there was a considerable amount of delay. Nazir was aquitted by a Karnataka court recently.

OneIndia News