KARACHI: A local court on Wednesday remanded journalist Farhan Mallick to Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) custody for five days in connection with a call centre fraud case.
The journo was arrested in a new case on Tuesday instead of being sent into judicial remand as per court’s orders in the first case registered against him last week.
Mallick — who worked for a private news channel as its director news and now owns a YouTube channel — was taken into custody on March 20 for charges of spreading anti-state content. He was due to be remanded to judicial custody after the completion of a 4-day physical remand in the first case, yesterday.
As per the latest development, the FIA claimed to have raided a call centre a day earlier, alleging that its employees were involved in stealing data from foreigners and defrauding them.
Two suspects were arrested, who reportedly told authorities that the call centre was being operated under Mallick’s orders.
The FIR stated that the suspects, namely Syed Muhammad Atir Hussain and Hasan Najeeb Alam, along with others were involved in defrauding several foreign nationals by stealing confidential financial data of their credit cards “through spoofed calls and impersonation”, which is allegedly used for wrongful gains.
“During enquiry, a raid was conducted at the office of ‘Sradtechies’ located at Suite No 12 Gulshan view Gulshan-e-Iqbal Block-13C, Karachi, where the employees (agents) were found performing the illegal action of spoofed calls through ‘Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP)’ software to different foreign nationals and obtaining their confidential credentials by alluring them that they are calling from security department of master and visa banking system and that they will lower the interest rates on taxes upon the loan obtained by them,” the FIR read.
It further stated that one of the arrested suspects revealed that Mallick was also involved in patronising the said criminal activity.
Today, the FIA officials presented Mallick before the Judicial Magistrate Malir-I for hearing on the new case and the court subsequently granted them a five-day physical remand of the journalist.
Speaking to media outside the court, Mallick’s lawyer, Advocate Moiz Jafri, said that the FIA had kept the journalist in its custody despite a court order against it.
According to Jafri, the law requires that after sending an accused to jail, authorities must inform jail officials before making an arrest in another case.
Jafri further said that Mallick’s family visited multiple prisons in search of him, but he was not found in any of them. He described the FIA’s actions as arbitrary and unlawful.
He said that the detained journalist was supposed to be presented for remand yesterday, but the process was deliberately delayed.
Jafri claimed that the FIA had conducted a raid yesterday and arrested the individuals named in the FIR. Based on their statements, Mallick was also taken into custody. He dismissed the charges as baseless, asserting that a false case was registered against Malik on the same day to justify his arrest.
He said that the latest case was registered at a time when the journalist was scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday. He further contended that the entire sequence of events — case registration, raid, and arrests — took place within a single day.
The FIA had initially took the journalist into custody for allegedly violating the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) and involvement in defamation.
The contentious Peca law was recently amended and journalist bodies across the country have been protesting the law, dubing it an attempt to gag freedom of speech and intimidate newspersons and their media outlets.
An FIR had been lodged against him under multiple sections of the Peca Act read with Pakistan Penal Code’s Section 190 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment) and 500 (punishment for defamation).
The FIR mentioned that Mallick was allegedly involved in disseminating anti-state content.
