According to a police official, journalist Junaid Sagar Qureshi was arrested on Saturday under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016 for making a “provocative and false” video statement.
According to the police, ASI Tariq Mumtaz, the complainant, viewed the video on WhatsApp.
According to Junaid Sagar’s supposed video statement, the crowd became incensed and stoned the police when a dumper ran over a woman in the jurisdiction of Sir Syed police station. He further insisted that the first information report (FIR) showed that two other police officers and a station house officer had been hurt in the event.
The statement claims that after verification, it was discovered that no such police-related incident had been reported and that the account of a woman being run over was also untrue.
According to Section 21 of the PECA (2016), a formal complaint was filed against the journalist for disseminating inaccurate and inflammatory material.
Since its implementation in 2016, PECA has drawn a lot of criticism for being a “black law” that was primarily designed to suppress dissent.
It has been widely applied against journalists, politicians, rights advocates, and even regular political workers in the eight years since it was passed.
In January, the National Assembly passed a contentious bill to reform the nation’s cybercrime laws, but PTI legislators and journalists boycotted the meeting.
Qureshi is the most recent journalist to be charged by Peca. Journalist Farhan Mallick, the former news director of Samaa TV and founder of the media agency Raftar, was apprehended on March 20 in connection with the posting of allegedly “anti-state” content on his organization’s YouTube channel.
He was booked under both the Pakistan Penal Code and Peca.
A few days later, the Federal Investigation Agency brought Urdu News journalist Waheed Murad before an Islamabad court citing Sections 9 (glorification of an offence), 10 (cyber-terrorism), 20 (malicious code), and 26A (punishment for false and fake information) of the Peca.
