KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency has arrested a man for allegedly posting an inappropriate advertisement involving a girl on a free classifieds online network, it emerged on Tuesday.

The girl’s father lodged a complaint with the FIA’s cyber crime wing stating that his daughter started receiving calls on her mobile phone from unknown numbers as a result of an advertisement posted on the website that had her morphed pictures along with her mobile phone number.

The girl, a DHA resident, found out about the advertisement after she received phone calls and text messages on her mobile phone on Jan 16 and subsequently she informed her family about it.

The complainant added that she continued to receive inappropriate messages on WhatsApp and other applications.

Officials said that the FIA’s cyber crime wing traced the IP address of the man who had posted that advertisement and managed to arrest him at his house in the Jamshed Road area.

They said that electronic equipment, including the suspect’s laptop, were also seized.

The officials claimed that the suspect confessed to his crime.

A case (FIR 05/2016) was registered under Sections 36 (Violation of privacy of information) and 37 (Damage to information system, etc) of the Electronic Transactions Ordinance, 2002.

A judicial magistrate remanded the man in FIA custody for two days.

This is a second case within a week in which the FIA arrested a man for creating a fake Profile/advertisement in a girl’s name.

Earlier, another man was arrested after he allegedly created a fake profile on Facebook under a girl’s name who was her classmate in college.

The deputy director of the cyber crime wing, Zaeem Ahmed, said that they continued receiving complaints with regards to online harassment in which victims were both men and women.

The men, he said, usually got conned by fake schemes on the internet or “get conned during money transactions online”, whereas the women complained of sexual harassment “usually by people they know online”.

He said the two cases were resolved one after the other as they were of a similar nature. “These cases don’t resolve as swiftly as it may seem from the outside. It takes weeks of investigation and data gathering. At times, the people refuse to show up after filing the initial complaint,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2016