ISLAMABAD: An Islamabad district and sessions court extended physical remand of PTI spokesperson Raoof Hasan and eight others by three days over suspicion of running alleged “Anti-state digital campaigns”.

Hasan was arrested on Monday during raid conducted by Islamabad police and Federal Investigation Agency on PTI’s Central Office in case under Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 (Peca). PTI is involved in “Anti-state propaganda”, Ministry’s statement had said, without giving any more details. Joint interrogation team was being formed to probe case, it  PTI MNA Gohar Khan had linked the action against his party to Supreme Court’s order in reserved seats case, which set PTI to emerge as single largest party in National Assembly. Twelve individuals, including Hasan, had been booked under sections 9 (glorification of an offence), 10 (cyberterrorism) and 11 (electronic forgery) of Peca by FIA’s cybercrime wing. Two women named in case, Farhat Khalid and Iqra Ilyas, had already been remanded into judicial custody. 12 suspects in Monday’s FIR also included Janjua who had been arrested last week. Today, nine suspects excluding two women and Janjua were presented before magistrate Shabbir, where Ali Bukhari and Latif Khosa appeared as Hasan’s counsel, while Imran Feroze Malik was FIA prosecutor. FIA investigation officer sought another eight-day physical remand of suspects for “Investigation, seizure of social media accounts, further analysis to ascertain their links and relations with other SMT team members of PTI throughout globe”, court order stated.

At outset of hearing, FIA prosecutor informed court that “Social media accounts have not been recovered yet” and that Gmail account was yet to be logged into. “Paid individuals are running WhatsApp groups, [which] include people from abroad. Fake accounts have been recovered from suspects’ mobile phones,” Malik claimed. On other hand, PTI’s Khosa questioned “Quality” of current “Form-47 government”. “This government is concerned about realities being disclosed. Entire world is saying this,” he said.