KARACHI: Court of a judicial magistrate on Friday summoned an additional director of the cybercrime reporting centre Karachi on November 25 to explain the inordinate delay in filing of charge sheets in close to 1,200 cases of online harassment, identity theft, pornography and other offences.
Judicial Magistrate (East) Mukesh Kumar Talreja gave a two-week deadline to the additional director for filing a report.
During a hearing of the case, it had emerged that as many as 1,200 complaints, inquiries, investigations were lodged by the public under the Prevention of Electronic Crime Act (PECA) at the FIA cell in Karachi from January 1 till September 1, 2021.
Since October this year, the court has been issuing a show-cause notice to the additional director to explain why proceedings might not be initiated against him over the failure of the investigating officers in submitting the charge sheets.
On Friday, FIA’s Special Public Prosecutor Sheraz Rajpar appeared before the court and submitted that the additional director could not appear since he was travelling abroad. He requested more time to enable the senior officer to appear before the court and submit his report, as had been directed by the court earlier.
The trials in the cases based on these public complaints and inquires related to cybercrimes, identity theft, pornography or online harassment remain stalled in the courts as the investigation officers had failed to submit investigation reports, as required under Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
The court’s record showed these complaints had been lodged under sections 13, 14, 16 and 26 of the PECA, 2016. The sections deal with the usage of electronic devices for the commission of an offence, unauthorised use of (a person’s) identity information, tempering of the communication equipment used in the offence and other offences, which are punishable under the provisions of the PECA.
The judicial magistrate in his earlier order had noted that no action had been taken by the additional director in the submission of the investigation reports so that these cases could be decided.
The magistrate had sent a letter to the additional director stating that a series of letters were written to the centre. In the letter, 30 days was granted to the then circle in charge on July 17, which had elapsed on August 16.
Later, the additional director personally appeared before the court and requested seven days more time to comply with the court’s directives. But neither was any report filed nor any intimation was sent to the court, the magistrate had noted.
The judge had observed that no report was being submitted to the court in routine regarding the progress of the case registered at the centre.
According to the sub-rule 3 of rule 7 of PECA Rules, 2018 an investigation officer has to submit an investigation report within 60 days of the registration of a case, the judge had noted in the letter.
Whereas under sub-rule 4 and 5 a case is to be registered if a cognizable offence is made out, while in case of non-cognizable offence, the matter is to be reported to the concerned court for seeking permission for investigation in terms of section 155 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
