KARACHI: A judicial magistrate has sentenced a man to more than four years in prison after he pleaded guilty to sharing and publishing private pictures and videos of his former female friend on social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp.

Judicial Magistrate (East) Gulraiz Memon convicted Muhammad Sohail, who entered a guilty plea during the trial.

The court sentenced him on four counts, awarding one-year imprisonment each for unauthorised use of identity information, offences against the dignity of a natural person, and offences against the modesty of a natural person, besides an additional 15-month imprisonment for cyberstalking, as well as imposed fine on the convict.

However, the court ruled that all the sentences shall run concurrently.

Before pronouncing the verdict, the judge put questions to the accused in order to ascertain if the plea of guilt was outcome of any threat, pressure, undue influence, promise, inducement, for that the accused responded that he was pleading guilty voluntarily and without any pressure.

He expressed remorse before the court for committing the offence and stated that he had not previously been convicted in any other case. He also sought leniency from the court.

According to state prosecutor Sheeraz Rajpar, the FIR was registered against the accused in December 2024 on the complaint of the victim, who stated that she had been in a relationship with him but later ended it.

After the break-up, the accused allegedly created a fake Facebook account in the her name and uploaded her pictures and videos without taking her consent. The complainant further alleged that he shared explicit material with her and her family members through WhatsApp in an attempt to blackmail and harass her and to take revenge for ending the relationship.

Later, the victim approached to the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and registered a case against the accused under Sections 16 (unauthorised use of identity information), 20 (dignity of natural persons), 21 (modesty of natural persons or minor), 24 (cyberstalking) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2026