PESHAWAR: A local court has turned down the pre-arrest bail plea of a man charged with seeking extortion and blackmailing a British national of Pakistani origin by threatening to release the pictures of his female family members on social media.

Additional district and sessions judge Mohammad Tayyib observed that the accused, Bilal Khan, was charged with asking the complainant for Rs700 million, issuing him death threats and threatening to share the pictures of his female family members taken in a marriage ceremony on social networking websites.

The court ruled that the accused couldn’t prove any mala fide or ulterior motive on part of the complainant and therefore, his petition for pre-arrest bail was dismissed.

The other accused, including Mohammad Ibrahim and his wife, Num Gul, are at large.

The FIR of the offence was registered at the Hayatabad police station on Nov 24, 2020, under the Pakistan Penal Code sections 384 (extortion) and 506 (criminal intimidation)and Telegraph Act Section 25-D (causing annoyance through use of phone).

The extortion demand was made in March 2019 leading to the registration of an FIR by the police on the orders of a local court acting as the ‘Justice of Peace’ as the complainant filed an application with it for the purpose under Section 22-A of the Code of Criminal Procedure.

Advocate Mohammad Salman Shahzad appeared for the complainant and said that the accused belonged to a gang of anti-social elements, who first take pictures of the participants of marriage ceremonies and later blackmail them for money.

He said the accused had been charged in scores of other cases of identical nature.

The lawyer claimed that the accused was earlier arrested in Islamabad on similar charges but escaped from the police’s custody.

He added that that the woman nominated in the case attended the ceremony of the marriage of the complainant’s brother and took pictures of the female members of his family.

The counsel said that the accused later sent those pictures to the complainant and asked him to pay Rs700 million warning if he didn’t meet the demand, the pictures would be released on social media.

He added that the accused had also issued death threats to the complainant and warned him against informing law-enforcement agencies about the extortion demand.

The counsel contended that the accused was involved in a heinous crime, so he did not deserve to be extended the concession of pre-arrest bail.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2021