‘Blackmailer’ school principal remanded for questioning

A Malir court on Tuesday granted police seven days’ remand of a private school’s principal who was arrested for allegedly sexually abusing a number of women and filming the act to blackmail them.

Irfan Memon has been booked by the Steel Town police on charges of sexual assault, insulting a woman’s modesty and criminal intimidation. The investigating officer brought the detained suspect before the Malir judicial magistrate and requested his physical remand in police custody for interrogation.

The IO said the suspect needed to be questioned about his alleged involvement in the heinous crime. Citing the initial findings, the officer claimed that there were more than 45 potential victims of the suspected sex offender, who had filmed them to blackmail them.

He said the mobile phone seized from the suspect would be sent to a lab for forensic analysis, as more evidence was to be collected. The magistrate handed over the custody of the suspect to the police for seven days, with the direction to bring him to court on the completion of his remand, along with the investigation report.

An FIR was registered against the suspect under sections 376 (punishment for rape), 506 (punishment for criminal intimidation) and 509 (insulting modesty or causing sexual harassment) of the Pakistan Penal Code, and Section 25 of the Telegraph Act at the Steel Town police station on behalf of the state through ASI Aftab Hussain.

The complainant said that he was on patrol duty with his subordinates when he learnt about a video clip circulating on social media. The video showed a man subjecting different women to sexual abuse, he said.

He added that the suspect was later identified as Irfan, owner of a private school in Gulshan-e-Hadeed. He also said the man was subsequently taken into custody, and a mobile phone was seized from him.

On Monday District Malir SSP Hassan Sardar had told the media that a total of 25 video clips had been found on the suspect’s mobile phone.

He said the suspect enticed women by offering them employment, then forced them into engaging in sexual activities with him, adding that he also recorded the act to blackmail the women. The officer said that five women had confirmed to the investigators that they had been the principal’s victims.