KARACHI: A court has re-issued a show-cause notice to the additional director of the Cyber Crime Reporting Center to explain why action may not be taken against him for failing to submit charge sheets in around 1,200 pending inquiries related to online harassment, identity theft, pornography and other offences registered in Karachi.

Judicial Magistrate (East) Mukesh Kumar Talreja directed the FIA official to personally appear with a written explanation on Oct 25 (today) to explain why charge sheets were not being submitted by the investigating officers.

Judicial sources told Dawn that as many as 1,200 complaints/ enquiries/ investigation were lodged by the people with the FIA in Karachi from January 1 till September 1, 2021.

They said that trials in the cases based on these public complaints/enquires — related to cybercrimes, identity theft, pornography or online harassment — remain stalled in the courts as the IOs had failed to submit investigation reports, as required under the Section 173 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

The complaints had been lodged under relevant clauses of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA), 2016 about usage of electronic devices for the commissioning of an offence, unauthorised use of (a person’s) identity information, tempering of the communication equipment used in the offence and other offences.

“However, no action had been taken by the additional director of the Cyber Crime Reporting Cell-Karachi to ensure submission of the investigation reports so that these cases could be decided,” noted the magistrate in his order dated Oct 14.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2021