ISLAMABAD: 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).
