A police officer was arrested in Karachi under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016 for using \u201cderogatory remarks\u201d against President Asif Ali Zardari, it emerged on Friday.<\/p>\n
According to a first information report, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the station investigation officer (SIO) had posted a comment on Facebook wherein he used \u201cderogatory remarks against the late prime minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband and President Zardari.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FIR, filed by Assistant Sub-Inspector Muhammad Yaqoob on April 2, said that the inappropriate remarks against the president were hurtful to him and the citizens of the country, adding that there was also a chance of such acts spreading across the country if left unchecked.<\/p>\n
The FIR was registered under Section 21 of Peca 2016 and Section 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) of the Pakistan Penal Code.<\/p>\n
Peca, since its introduction in 2016, has been widely criticised as a \u201cblack law\u201d created mainly to punish dissent. In the eight years since its enactment, it has been used extensively against politicians, journalists, rights activists, and even ordinary political workers.<\/p>\n
The National Assembly in January passed a controversial amendment bill to the country\u2019s cybercrime laws amid a walkout by PTI lawmakers and journalists from the proceedings.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the administrator of a WhatsApp group in Punjab\u2019s Pakpattan was arrested for allegedly violating Peca by permitting an insulting post targeting Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz to be shared in the group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A police officer was arrested in Karachi under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016 for using \u201cderogatory remarks\u201d against President Asif Ali Zardari, it emerged on Friday. According to a first information report, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the station investigation officer (SIO) had posted a comment on Facebook wherein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7820","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\/7820","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=7820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7822,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7820\/revisions\/7822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weeklyyoung.pk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}