ISLAMABAD: The Lahore High Court has rejected the bail plea of two people accused of hacking and defacing the official website of the Supreme Court.
“Those who have ridiculed the superior judiciary and judicial system of the country and circulated it around the world through hacking are not entitled to any leniency,” Justice Rauf Ahmad Sheikh of the Rawalpindi bench of LHC observed while dismissing the bail petition of Saim Ali Shah and Salaal Ali Shah.
They have been accused of defacing the SC website and inserting highly derogatory material against the judiciary in general and the chief justice in particular.
The complaint was lodged by the SC registrar with the FIA and later referred to the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes (NR3C). Cyber Crime Director Shahid Nadeem Baloch had constituted a special team which traced the culprits who are from Kohat.
Aamir Azad Khan, the counsel for the petitioners, said his clients were innocent and had been falsely implicated in the case because the IP addresses allegedly used in the hacking belonged to India. He argued that the petitioners were under the age of 18 and, therefore, entitled to the concession of bail. He said that sections of the law so applied were not attracted to the circumstances of the case.
Tariq Bilal Advocate, legal adviser to the NR3C, opposed the bail plea and said that the prosecution or the complainant had no malice against the petitioners. They were traced through modern devices. The material used in the hacking as well as footprints of the hacked page had been recovered from the computer which was in the use of the accused at their home, he said, adding that the question of mala fide did not arise.
The judge observed that sufficient material was available on record to connect the petitioners with the commission of the offence and as such they were not entitled to any lenient view.
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