KARACHI: A local court on Saturday remanded a seminary teacher in the custody of the Federal Investigation Agency in a case pertaining to child pornography.

The FIA on Friday claimed to have arrested a religious tutor over allegations of child pornography and harassing a teenage girl.

On Saturday, the investigating officer produced the suspect before the judicial magistrate concerned to seek his physical remand in police custody for interrogation and investigation.

The IO mentioned that the FIA’s Cyber Crime Circle had arrested the suspect in Gulshan-i-Iqbal on a complaint lodged by a woman.

According to the complainant, she had hired a qari (religious teacher) for home tuition to teach her children.

Later, her 13-year-old daughter complained that she had been physically abused by the qari, said the IO, adding that the teenage girl also complained that the accused also allegedly took her obscene pictures and on their basis, he was trying to harass and blackmail her, demanding money.

The IO informed that a mobile phone was recovered from the custody of the suspect and had been sent to a laboratory for forensic analyses and obscene images of the victim/minor girl were found in the device.

He requested for 14-day physical remand of the suspect in custody of the FIA for interrogation and completion of investigation.

However, the judge remanded the suspect in FIA custody for three days with direction to the IO to produce him on the next date along with an investigation report.

A case has been registered under Sections 22 (spamming) and 24 (legal recognition of offences committed in relation to information system) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and Section 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code.

Published in Dawn, Jannuary 3rd, 2021