On Wednesday, Peshawar’s sessions court sentenced 8 years imprisonment and imposed Rs50,000 fine to a man who was involved in uploading pictures of a woman and her family on Facebook to blackmail them.
Additional sessions judge Kalsoom Azam under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016 indicted Ahsan Sheraz, a resident of Peshawar. The man created a false Facebook ID and used to upload pictures of a woman and her family.
A complaint was registered to FIA in 2017 by victim’s father Syed Mehboob. The culprit has been in jail since 2017 after the registration of the complaint. His bail application was also rejected at that time.
In a similar case last year, a magistrate in Lahore had imposed a fine of Rs 0.7M and added compensation of Rs.1M for harassing and blackmailing a woman on Facebook. The woman was the wife of an Air Force officer.
According to techjuice.pk and Digital Rights Foundation (a non-profit organization in Pakistan) women in Pakistan are prone to cyber-harassment on WhatsApp and Facebook. A breakdown of that report showed some shocking numbers about women being harassed online in Pakistan:
• 57% online harassment cases from Punjab
• 18% online harassment cases from Sindh
• 5% online harassment cases from KPK
• 5% online harassment cases from Islamabad
• 2% online harassment cases from Baluchistan
• 1% online harassment cases Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Federally Administered Tribal Areas.
