Pro-IS Twitter Account, Probe Intensified

Intensifying its probe, Police are looking into all links of alleged handler of Pro-Islamic State Twitter account Mehdi Masroor Biswas, even as they downplayed a threat on the micro blogging site that the city will be the next target for Sydney like hostage crisis.

As they widened the probe examining "all angles", police also asked Twitter to provide more details regarding ShamiWitness account, which are "crucial" to the probe. The city police said there is absolutely no threat perception to the country's IT capital and appealed to public not to pay heed to such things.

"Appeal: public not to pay heed to any of the so called threatening tweets reg(arding) safety of Bengaluru city," City Police Commissioner M N Reddi tweeted. "There is absolutely no threat perception. However we will thoroughly verify the source of these claims.

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All precautions are taken," he wrote in another tweet. The appeal came in the wake of a tweet from "Islamic State Media" twitter handle, which the police suspect to be a parody account, threatening that Bengaluru will be the target for next Sydney like hostage crisis.

An armed man today took undisclosed number of people hostages at a popular cafe in Sydney and displayed an Islamic flag with Arabic script in the window, sparking a security alert in Australia. Speaking to reporters here, Reddi said "Twitter is a different kind of platform; we can't know about who is sending them (tweet).

We can't get to know about who has created the handle. We can't get to know from where the person is tweeting; .....so if some one sends message like this, it is not necessary that it is true." However, he said "....on receiving any such threat there is a procedure in place; we will investigate it and accordingly take action." Stating that police will find out the details of the tweet, he said "....we maintain the alert level on the basis of various types of inputs we receive, but I don't feel that alert level in the city has to be heightened because of this tweet."

Source: PTI