This story is from December 14, 2014

He aspired to be a strategist

Mehdi Biswas carefully kept his real and virtual lives apart
He aspired to be a strategist
A genius clouded and confused by fanaticism. That’s how officers who arrested and interrogated Mehdi Biswas described him. A man who carefully kept his real and virtual lives apart.
He didn’t want to be a foot soldier but wanted to in the top layer, as a strategist.
He was drawn to religion since his college days and soon became deep-rooted in extremist ideas.
Apart from online activities, he spent most of his time reading, mostly about the Levantine region comprising countries like Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Turkey. “Even though he hadn’t visited any of these countries, he had in-depth knowledge of this area,” said Hemanth Nimbalkar, joint commissioner of police, (crime), who interrogated him.
He believed in the idea of an Islamic state and when asked why didn’t strive for it in India, he said India had no real Muslims capable of jihad
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi, a researcher of jihadi groups and blogger, who had written about Mehdi called him a cheerleader for Isis. He said Mehdi’s status as a ‘recruiter’ is debatable. “One could term him a ‘recruiter’in the sense that his relentless tweeting contributed to a wider atmosphere of online narrative furtherance for Isis that might provide some motivation for someone to join it,” he said in an email conversation. He was highly influential in the unofficial Isis support network because of his ability to translate from Arabic to English.

He added that in the fight against Isis, perhaps government agencies found him useful as an ‘inadvertent honeypot’ to track the accounts of would-be recruits reaching out to him via Twitter or email asking how to join Isis.
Offline, he led a quiet life. His landlord Srinivasaiah didn’t have a clue that Mehdi was involved in a global terror propaganda machinery. “He approached me in 2012 stating that he’d got a job in the city and he was from West Bengal. He wanted a one-room apartment. A few months ago, he moved from the second floor to the first,” he said.
Mehdi hardly spoke to neighbours, his parents visited him a couple of times over two years, as recently as a few months ago. Mehdi had two or three friends but spent time alone at home. He didn’t own any vehicle, preferred walking to office and often ate at eatery nearby. Among Mehdi’s few outings was to buy chicken dishes from the neighbourhood hotelier.
A quiet life which effectively concealed a completely different online persona.
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