KARACHI: A local court in Karachi on Wednesday remanded journalist Farhan Mallick into the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) custody for five days in a newly registered fraud case.
According to the first information report (FIR), the FIA arrested two suspects, identified as Atir Hussain and Hassan Najeeb during a raid conducted on a call centre in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on March 25.
“The call centre was involved in fraudulent activities, including giving confidential data to foreigners via software”, it added.
“The arrested suspects reportedly confessed to working for Mallick, leading to the institution of the new case against him.
Mallick, the founder of media agency Raftar and a former news director at Samaa TV, was arrested on March 20 in Karachi and booked under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) as well as the Pakistan Penal Code. The next day, he was handed into the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) custody for four days.
Lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii, the counsel for Mallick, condemned the new case.
“After keeping him in custody in violation of court orders all of yesterday, the FIA sprung a surprise by presenting @FarhanGMallick in the Malir court with a new FIR,” he regretted.
“What they are trying to do is waste more days of his life,” Jaferii told Dawn.com. “It will probably take up five more days in clearing this process [the fresh case],” he added.
Earlier, Mallick was booked by the FIA under sections 16 (unauthorised use of identity information), 20 (offences against dignity of a natural person) and 26-A of Peca 2016]2, as well as sections 500 (punishment for defamation) and 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
Notably, Section 26A is among the provisions recently added to the Peca laws, wherein fake news is defined as any information about which a person “knows or has reason to believe to be false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of fear, panic or disorder or unrest”.
Any person found guilty of spreading such information could be sentenced to up to three years in prison or fined up to Rs2 million, or both.
The criminalisation of alleged online disinformation has spread fear in Pakistan, with journalists among those worried about the potentially wide reach of the law.
The law has sparked concern among journalists and civil society over its broad interpretation and impact on press freedom. Mallick’s continued detention has further intensified debate over the use of cybercrime laws against media professionals.
