ISLAMABAD, June 6: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is in hot water after recovering computers from the house of a civil judge in Peshawar – at least one of which is suspected to have been used for creating fake Facebook profiles of a prominent woman member of the National Assembly.

Informed sources told Dawn that Kashmala Tariq, an MNA of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q’s Likeminded Group, had filed a complaint in May last year with former interior minister Rehman Malik about the presence of defamatory material on internet against her, with around a dozen fake Facebook profiles.

The complaint was referred for action to the FIA through the interior secretary and the director general of the investigating agency. Orders were obtained from a judicial magistrate to summon record from Facebook USA to determine the creators of fake accounts, besides registration and transaction data. The data acquired from Facebook identified two addresses from where these fake accounts were created and accessed. One of them was in Sialkot and the other in Peshawar.

The FIA obtained search and seizure warrants from the court of Tanvir Hussain, judicial magistrate, Peshawar, on March 27 and conducted raid at the identified address in coordination with police. The raid yielded two computers, a hard disc and a PTCL modem.

“It was a legal process by all means and the addresses had been identified

by using modern devices. There is no question of falsely implicating anybody in the case as we have no enmity with the other party”, special prosecutor FIA’s cyber crime wing Tariq Bilal Advocate told Dawn. He said the action was purely based on the technical evidence.

The FIA, in all likelihood, did not know at the time of recovery that the internet connection identified to have been misused was installed in the name of a serving civil judge, Muhammad Arif, whose brother Haroon-ur-Rasheed happens to be a lawyer.

The action by the FIA enraged the judge and his brother, who decided to teach a lesson to law enforcement agencies.

Haroon-ur-Rasheed first filed a petition with the Peshawar High Court on March 30 challenging the legality He impleaded FIA and Peshawar police as respondents.

Then another petition was filed with the court of judicial magistrate, Peshawar, Ajmal Tahir, on April 10.

Another case was filed with judicial magistrate Muhammad Ilyas Tahir on May 21.

Yet another case was pending for registration of a case against two station house officers (SHOs) of Peshawar and officers of FIA’s cyber crime wing since April 2. The case was slated for orders on the application of Haroon-ur-Rasheed for registration of an FIR when the FIA somehow came to know about the fresh development and immediately sought to be heard in court.

The case was adjourned to June 14 for filing of a reply by the FIA. The case filed with judicial magistrate Ilyas Tahir will come up for hearing on Friday.