A Karachi district court dismissed the bail application of journalist Farhan Mallick on Friday in a case pertaining to running allegedly “anti-state” content on his outlet’s YouTube channel.

Mallick, the founder of media agency Raftar and a former news director at Samaa TV, was arrested on March 20 in Karachi and booked under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) as well as the Pakistan Penal Code. The next day, he was handed over to the Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) custody for four days.

During the previous proceeding, Judicial Magistrate Yusra Ashfaq reserved her order on the post-arrest bail application of the journalist. She also summoned an additional director of the FIA for failing to comply with the court order regarding Mallick’s jail custody.

Today’s hearing was held inside Courtroom 14 of City Court District East. The journalist’s lawyers were expecting his bail application to be accepted. However, after over a three-hour wait, Judge Yusra dismissed the plea. A detailed order will be issued tomorrow (Saturday).

In a media talk afterwards, Mallick’s lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii said they were hopeful today’s outcome would have been in the journalist’s favour as their grounds and arguments presented during Thursday’s hearing were strong.

“Let’s see what the [written] order says and what the reasons are,” the lawyer said. “We will look at the order and then go for appeal.”

During the proceedings, the FIA director appeared in court via the rear entrance. The court ordered him to prepare an internal inquiry report on the non-compliance with court orders and submit it within 15 days.

It must be noted that the court had earlier rejected the FIA’s request to extend Mallick’s custody in the case and sent him to prison on judicial remand. However, defence counsel Jaferii moved an application against FIA before the court, stating that instead of handing over the journalist to the jail concerned, the agency illegally kept him in custody.

Ahead of the hearing, a number of journalists showed up at the City Court in solidarity with Mallick. His wife, Tazeen, was there as well, along with some members from the media agency Raftar, owned by the imprisoned journalist.

‘Clear conscience’

Speaking to Dawn.com ahead of the proceedings, Tazeen shared that her husband first received a notice from the FIA in November last year. “But they did not provide any grounds to us or reasoning for it,” she recalled.

“But then on March 19, FIA officials barged into Mallick’s office and harassed his tea boy,” she said, adding that they then broke into her husband’s office and pressed him to meet the FIA director. “When he went to their office the next day, they arrested him after an hours-long wait,” Tazeen added.

Currently, Mallick has been imprisoned at the FIA Cyber Crime office at Gulistan-i-Jauhar. “We are allowed to meet him … every day I take sehar and iftar for him,” she said.

“He is in high spirits because he knows he hasn’t done anything wrong,” Tazeen asserted. “Our conscience is clear.”

Regarding the court proceedings, Mallick’s wife said she didn’t have high hopes, lamenting that every hearing began after a four- to five-hour delay. “Every time we come to the court, we expect the worst.”

The case

According to a first information report (FIR) dated March 20, the FIA had received a report about Raftar TV’s YouTube channel, which was “involved in running a campaign for the posting of anti-state videos targeting the dignitaries mentioned in violation”.

Mallick had been booked under sections 16 (unauthorised use of identity information), 20 (offences against the dignity of a natural person) and 26-A of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016, as well as sections 500 (punishment for defamation) and 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

Notably, Section 26A is among the provisions recently added to the Peca laws, wherein fake news is defined as any information about which a person “knows or has reason to believe to be false or fake and likely to cause or create a sense of fear, panic or disorder or unrest”.

Any person found guilty of spreading such information could be sentenced to up to three years in prison or fined up to Rs2 million, or both.

The criminalisation of online disinformation has spread fear in Pakistan, with journalists among those worried about the potentially wide reach of the law.