KARACHI: Police have registered a terrorism case against an official of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited on the complaint of a subscriber, a senior police officer confirmed to Dawn on Saturday.

The Aziz Bhatti police late on Friday night registered the case against the PTCL’s divisional engineer, Khalid Butt, and some other officials of the Gulshan-i-Iqbal main exchange on the complaint of Jafar Abbas Jafferi under relevant sections of the Telegraph Act and the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.

SSP-Investigations Zulfiqar Mahar said: “The complainant claims that on his PTCL number/IP address officials have hosted websites of Daesh [militant Islamic State group].”

He said that the legal branch of the telecoms giant had contacted him and he told them not to get bail, as “no sufficient evidence is available at this stage”.

In his application, the complainant said that his landline and the internet connection were allegedly ‘misused’ by some people as he overheard people talking in the Arabic and Uzbek languages.

He said he lodged complaints with the PTCL to shut his number but to no avail. Finally, he visited the PTCL office in Gulshan-i-Iqbal where Mr Butt of the PTCL allegedly told him that his phone was being “used by an Islamic organisation for a pious purpose” and he [the complainant] would go to “paradise”. However, he did not disclose the name of the organisation.

“It was a highly sensitive matter which requires a proper probe,” said SSP-East Javed Jiskani. “The allegations are levelled by a private complainant and the burden of proof lies on him.

“It appears to be a complicated case and we are trying to obtain the help of security agencies in the investigation keeping in view the seriousness of the charges,” said the SSP-East.

He said that no arrest would be made till the completion of the inquiry.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2016