A Karachi district court dismissed the bail application of journalist Farhan Mallick on Friday in a case pertaining to running allegedly \u201canti-state\u201d content on his outlet\u2019s YouTube channel.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s (FIA) custody for four days.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s jail custody.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s hearing was held inside Courtroom 14 of City Court District East. The journalist\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n
In a media talk afterwards, Mallick\u2019s lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii said they were hopeful today\u2019s outcome would have been in the journalist\u2019s favour as their grounds and arguments presented during Thursday\u2019s hearing were strong.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s see what the [written] order says and what the reasons are,\u201d the lawyer said. \u201cWe will look at the order and then go for appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It must be noted that the court had earlier rejected the FIA\u2019s request to extend Mallick\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u2018Clear conscience\u2019
\nSpeaking to Dawn.com ahead of the proceedings, Tazeen shared that her husband first received a notice from the FIA in November last year. \u201cBut they did not provide any grounds to us or reasoning for it,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then on March 19, FIA officials barged into Mallick\u2019s office and harassed his tea boy,\u201d she said, adding that they then broke into her husband\u2019s office and pressed him to meet the FIA director. \u201cWhen he went to their office the next day, they arrested him after an hours-long wait,\u201d Tazeen added.<\/p>\n
Currently, Mallick has been imprisoned at the FIA Cyber Crime office at Gulistan-i-Jauhar. \u201cWe are allowed to meet him \u2026 every day I take sehar and iftar for him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is in high spirits because he knows he hasn\u2019t done anything wrong,\u201d Tazeen asserted. \u201cOur conscience is clear.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regarding the court proceedings, Mallick\u2019s wife said she didn\u2019t have high hopes, lamenting that every hearing began after a four- to five-hour delay. \u201cEvery time we come to the court, we expect the worst.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Karachi district court dismissed the bail application of journalist Farhan Mallick on Friday in a case pertaining to running allegedly \u201canti-state\u201d content on his outlet\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-court-and-crime"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7495,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7494\/revisions\/7495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}