An Islamabad district and sessions court on Thursday extended the physical remand of PTI spokesperson Raoof Hasan and eight others by three days over the suspicion of running alleged “anti-state digital campaigns”.
Hasan was arrested on Monday during a raid conducted by the Islamabad police and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on PTI’s Central Office in a case under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (Peca).
The arrest, which had been made early on Monday, was not confirmed by officials for hours. However, in a late-night statement, the interior ministry had said the raid was conducted on the information provided by PTI activist Ahmad Waqas Janjua, who had been arrested over the weekend.
PTI is involved in “anti-state propaganda”, the ministry’s statement had said, without giving any more details. A joint interrogation team was being formed to probe the case, it added.
A day after the raid, the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation sealed PTI’s central media secretariat for not having fire and life safety measures in place.
PTI MNA Gohar Khan had linked the action against his party to the Supreme Court’s order in the reserved seats case, which set the PTI to emerge as the single largest party in the National Assembly.
Twelve individuals, including Hasan, had been booked under sections 9 (glorification of an offence), 10 (cyberterrorism) and 11 (electronic forgery) of the Peca by the FIA’s cybercrime wing on Monday.
Two women named in the case, Farhat Khalid and Iqra Ilyas, had already been remanded into judicial custody. The 12 suspects in Monday’s FIR also included Janjua who had been arrested last week.
On Tuesday, Judicial Magistrate Muhammad Shabbir had approved a two-day physical remand of Hasan as the FIA sought his custody to recover social media accounts and electronic devices.
Today, nine suspects — excluding the two women and Janjua — were presented before magistrate Shabbir, where Ali Bukhari and Latif Khosa appeared as Hasan’s counsel, while Imran Feroze Malik was the FIA prosecutor.
The FIA investigation officer (IO) sought another eight-day physical remand of the suspects for “investigation, seizure of social media accounts, further analysis to ascertain their links and relations with other SMT team members of PTI throughout the globe”, the court order stated.
The order, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, cited a 2023 Islamabad High Court judgement, which stressed that the “power of remanding the accused to police custody must be exercised with great caution”.
“Hence, for the completion of the investigation and for the above purpose, the request of the IO is partially allowed,” it read.
The sessions court, allowing three-day remand “subject to pre- and post-medical examination of accused”, directed the FIA to present the suspects again on July 28 (Sunday).
The hearing
At the outset of the hearing, the FIA prosecutor informed the court that “social media accounts have not been recovered yet” and that a Gmail account was yet to be logged into.
“Paid individuals are running WhatsApp groups, [which] include people from abroad. Fake accounts have been recovered from the suspects’ mobile phones,” Malik claimed.
Asserting that Hasan heads and directs the PTI social media team, the FIA official said, “Campaigns are run against the judiciary and the administration. Jibran Ilyas is working from abroad.
“We only have one technical expert. [Therefore,] more time is required,” the prosecutor explained, arguing that after the Peca was amended, remand of up to 30 days could be granted.
On the other hand, PTI’s Khosa questioned the “quality” of the current “Form-47 government”. “This government is concerned about the realities being disclosed. The entire world is saying this,” he said.
“It is my right to criticise the government and talk about the theft of your (people’s) rights,” the senior lawyer asserted, arguing that the sections cited in the case were not applicable and “no allegation was proven”.
Noting that the judiciary’s role was to protect people’s rights, Khosa urged the court to discharge the suspects from the case.
Speaking about Hasan, he said the PTI leader was a “cancer patient and had served the country for 75 years”. He asked if anyone was arrested in the case over an attempt on Hasan’s life in May.
PTI counsel Bukhari asked what was to be recovered from the receptionist and the office guard who he said had also been arrested.
“What do they aim to achieve by detaining the person? They [already] have [their] mobile phones. If they want to have laboratory tests done, then take the blood samples,” he suggested.
Addressing concerns over not having arrest warrants, the FIA prosecutor argued, “The law shows leniency in this matter. If there are risks of suspects fleeing, then they can be arrested without warrants.”
He added that the aim of securing remand was not just recovery of a few things but investigation. The special prosecutor insisted: “We are not saying that we want them to be punished. We want investigations to be conducted.”
After both sides presented their arguments, Shabbir reserved his verdict and shortly after announced it, granting the FIA further physical remand of the nine suspects for three days.
FIA case and request
The first information report (FIR), a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, had been filed by Islamabad Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) Inspector Sajid Ikram on July 22.
Those named in the FIR comprised Hasan, Janjua, Farhat Khalid, Iqra Ilyas, Afaq Ahmad Alvi, Hameedullah Gul, Rashid Mehmood, Zeeshan Farooq, Syed Usama Wajid, Muhammad Rizwan Afzal, Muhammad Rafique and Syed Hamza.
In its request before the court today, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the FIA noted that the “interim technical report version 1.0 depicts that the accused persons in connivance with each other are involved in building negative and anti-state narrative with criminal intent through social media with local and foreign elements to undermine the integrity, sovereignty and security of the country”.
“Technical report also reveals that highly intimidating narrative was built against the armed forces, the state and judiciary to create the sense of fear, hared [sic], unrest within the masses,” it added.
“On daily basis, instructions through messages, audio notes, graphics and videos were received from abroad, and trends on the social media platforms are orchestrated by social media teams lead [sic] by one namely Jibran Ilyas and reports back to Hassan Rauf and others to incite violence, create law and order situation and fan cyberterrorism […],” the FIA request said.
It went on to say that the interim report showed there were “more than 100 alleged active social media groups” having more than 10,000 members who “build and circulate anti-state narrative”.
“The accused persons are to be confronted with the technical analysis report and their social media account activities,” the FIA highlighted, noting that “voice and video contents largely circulating” on social media and those extracted from digital devices were to be compared with the accused persons’ voice samples.
“Raids are to be conducted on their pointation for collection of electronic/digital devices used in commission of subject offences,” it added.
