A sessions court on Wednesday granted pre-arrest bail to a journalist in a case pertaining to alleged dissemination of ‘false and fabricated’ information.
Nadir Khan has been booked by the NCCIA Cyber Crime Reporting Centre Karachi under the Sections 3 (unauthorised access to information system or data) , 4 (unauthorized copying or transmission of data), 13 (electronic forgery), 14 (electronic fraud), 16 (unauthorized use of identity information), and 26 (spoofing) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 read with the Sections 109 (punishment of abetment) and 34 (common intention) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
After initial hearing, the district and sessions judge (South) granted interim pre-arrest bail to the journalist. The defence lawyer contended that on March 18, the applicant published an article on his news website regarding alleged seizure of an LPG vessel over suspicion of smuggling, adding that prior to publishing the article, he made bona finde efforts to verify the information by contacting FIA officials, but no response was received.
The lawyer said that astonishingly, within 33 minutes of the publication of the article, the NCCIA proceeded to lodge an FIR against the journalist. “A bare perusal of the facts narrated in the FIR makes it evident that none of the offences, as alleged, have been made out, and that the said FIR has been malafidely lodged against the Applicant in order to harass, humiliate and pressurize the Applicant to take down/remove the news articles that are published on his website,” he argued in the bail application.
According to the FIR, the NCCIA lodged the FIR on the basis of a complaint by FIA Anti-Corruption Circle Deputy Director Syed Ali Mardan about “dissemination of false and fabricated information” in respect of an inquiry.
The complaint stated that the Anti-Corruption Circle was conducting an inquiry into allegations against certain individuals and entities “involved in the preparation and use of fraudulent/fake/forged shipping documents for the purpose of sanctions evasion in respect of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG).” It claimed that Nadir Khan published a false and misleading article alleging that the FIA had stopped an LPG vessel purportedly belonging to influential persons.
“The contents of the said publication are factually incorrect, baseless and misleading. It is clarified that neither of the aforementioned individuals are under enquiry with the FIA Anti-Corruption Circle Karachi, nor are they persons of interest in the instant matter,” it said.
