KARACHI, Jan 27: The controversy over the use of personal data of Interior Minister Rehman Malik took a new turn when National Database Registration Authority (Nadra) staffers protesting against ‘the torture of their colleagues’ by the Federal Investigation Agency blocked Sharea Faisal for over half an hour on Friday afternoon.

Mr Malik’s data available with Nadra had been used to get a SIM (subscriber identification module) card activated and registered in his name and a news report regarding the entire episode was aired by a television channel a few days back, after which the federal government started the witch-hunt and picked up many people associated with Nadra and the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee.

The Nadra employees, however, resumed their work after half an hour when their chief, Ali Arshad Hakeem, assured them that the matter would be taken up at the highest level.

The protesting employees had suspended the work at all Nadra offices in the city since Thursday while no work had been done in Nadra offices elsewhere in the province on Friday.

Sources said that the nine Nadra employees picked up by the Federal Investigation Agency included two deputy managers, one assistant manager, and six data entry operators for the investigations a few days back.

These staffers had been released afterwards, though they were grilled for over 24 hours.

The condition of the four Nadra employees — Atique-ur-Rehman, Shaaban, Falaksher and Faisal Ameer — owing to the severe torture was said to be so poor that they could barely walk.

Only a few days back DawnNews aired the report regarding the issuance of a SIM card, which was also activated later, in the name of the federal interior minister. Following the media report, the FIA started investigating as to how the data was made available. Subsequently, some Nadra and CPLC staffers were interrogated and one of them, Khalid Noor, was finally booked in the case.

The sources said that Nadra data had reportedly been accessed from three sources — the CPLC, Pakistan Revenue Automation (which issues the national tax numbers) and from within the Nadra network. The investigators have reportedly traced the trail to Nadra’s office set up in a store near Lucky Star in Saddar.

Responding to Dawn queries, CPLC chief Ahmed Chinoy said that when the FIA contacted him, he took the staffers to the agency for interrogation. Subsequently, he said, he had been informed by the agency that one of the staffers, Khalid Noor, had
confessed to giving the minister’s data.

Mr Chinoy said the service of the staffer had been terminated from the CPLC, as he had committed a crime. Others were performing their duties as usual, he added.

When contacted, DawnNews journalist Asif Mahmood, who had prepared the report, said that he had obtained the data from his sources and that the thrust of his story was that the data at Nadra was not safe and there were leakages, as was proved in his report which showed that when the data of the interior minister could be accessed and used, anybody’s information could be accessed, and it was vulnerable to being misused.

He said he wanted to highlight the leakages in the system, so that these could be plugged, in the public interest.

He said that for the past couple of days he and his brother, also a journalist, had been receiving threatening calls.

Responding to Dawn queries, FIA Karachi chief Moazzam Jah said that the issue was being handled by the FIA’s Cyber Crime Cell, which did not report to him and reported directly to Islamabad.

Dawn tried repeatedly to approach FIA Additional Director Arif Haneef, the CCC chief, but he did not respond to the calls on his cellphone.