A district and sessions court in Islamabad issued bailable arrest warrants for YouTuber Imran Riaz Khan and two officials from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s anti-corruption body, it emerged on Saturday.
The arrest warrants, issued by Judicial Magistrate Abbas Shah yesterday and available with Dawn.com, were issued for Khan, head of the Directorate of Anti-Corruption Sadeeq Anjam and Adviser to the KP Chief Minister on Anti-Corruption Musaddiq Abbasi, over their alleged involvement in a social media campaign against Islamabad Judge Humayun Dilawar.
Dilawar was the judge who convicted PTI founder and former prime minister Imran Khan in the Toshakhana case in 2023 and sentenced him to three years in prison.
All three warrants were issued under Sections 20 (offences against dignity of a natural person), 24 (cyber stalking) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and Sections 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention), 109 (punishment of abetment if the act abetted is committed in consequence and where no express provision is made for its punishment), 505 (statement conducing to public mischief) and 506ii (punishment for criminal intimidation if threat be to cause death or grievous hurt, etc) of the Pakistan Penal Code.
There was no date given by which the three men needed to be produced before the court.
A day prior, the Islamabad High Court (IHC) dismissed a petition seeking to quash a cybercrime case registered against a petitioner accused of running the campaign.
Justice Raja Inaam Ameen Minhas, in a detailed judgement, ruled that the first information report (FIR) could not be quashed at this stage since a challan had already been submitted to the trial court. He further observed that partially quashing an FIR to the extent of one suspect, while others remained nominated, was a legal impossibility.
Last September, a judicial magistrate in KP’s Bannu issued arrest warrants for Judge Dilawar at the request of the Anti-Corruption Establishment, who were probing the Islamabad magistrate’s family’s alleged involvement in a graft case.
