ISLAMABAD: While fake news has become a major tool for the agenda-making factories to fix their critics and opponents by setting false narratives, no one is apparently interested in investigating as to who prepares these fake documents and sets the ball rolling for a propaganda warfare. After the Supreme Court took notice of the story of 37 bank accounts of Imran Ali, a rapist from Kasur, another journalist Asad Kharral reported with full certainty that in fact the rapist had 166 bank accounts.
The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and all relevant government departments have announced in categorical terms that Imran Ali has no bank account whatsoever anywhere in Pakistan. Still the journalist sticks to his story insisting that his information is correct.
One anchor went to the extent of claiming that in fact a powerful criminal racket running child pornography business internationally, including some key players of the incumbent government in Pakistan, had “deleted these bank accounts” with the help of SBP.
Documents shown by these journalists are ‘search logs’ of Nadra database which is not even accessible by the ordinary Nadra officials.
It is crucially important to investigate as to who has access to these ‘search logs’ if one is really sincere in finding out as to which agenda-making factories are behind this malicious campaign which has thwarted smooth investigation into repeated child rape cases.
As the CNIC number of rapist Imran Ali was flashed on the screens of TV channels, different banks searched this CNIC to check whether this person has any account with them.
All banks are connected with the Nadra’s central database and whenever any bank searches the data of any individual against his/her CNIC number, a ‘search log’ is created in the Nadra database against that CNIC number. Only the top Nadra management and some important law enforcement agencies have access to this database and ‘search logs’.
The point worthy of note is that whatever was taken from the search log was sent onward despite the fact that logs only show that an attempt has been made through the identity card to search for the bank accounts.
This does not mean that the holder of the identity card has an account in this bank. But the anchor was misfed that it was the account of the targeted person. In fact, it was just the search record made by the bank with regard to the account of holder of the identity card.
Under a well-designed plot, initially a list of 37 banks from this ‘search log’ was provided to a media person who dubbed it a list of 37 bank accounts.
Later, more banks were searched, some multiple times, and the list in ‘search log’ continued to get longer.
Interestingly, after the SC notice, a private news channel broke the story that the total bank accounts of Imran Ali had become 162 and then took the reporter, Asad Kharral, on the line. Kharral informed viewers that in fact from the time he initially informed the channel to the time of start of his beeper, the list of “bank accounts” of rapist Imran Ali had reached to 166.
The basic issue is that all the institutions probing or monitoring this matter, including the Supreme Court, have yet to see as to who is leaking this list of ‘search logs’, which official (s) of law enforcement agencies are sending it to the anchors and Asad Kharral who were befooling people at large and sabotaging the investigation of the most heinous and cruel crime Pakistan has come across in years.
A powerful group is behind such anchors and journalists which supplies them with false information, fake documents and concocted stories to create unrest and malign critics and opponents, mostly for political gains and to get more and more power.
While the apex court is all set to hear Zainab rape and murder case today, it will be crucially important whether orders are passed to set up a commission comprising thorough independent professionals to investigate as to who leaked this ‘search logs’ list by showing it as a list of bank accounts to the media persons.
Technically, it will be very easy to find it out and reach the real culprits but practically it will be very difficult because this racket involved in spreading propaganda is very powerful.
A few months back, some bloggers, including Ahmad Waqas Goraya, Salman Haider, Asim Saeed who all were educated and respectable Pakistanis, were arrested because of their critical views.
In order to fix them, agenda-making factories ran a comprehensive false campaign at the national level using the social media and the anchors to allege these bloggers for blasphemy. Those who knew these bloggers personally were aware of the fact that they could do anything but blasphemy.
Many people, including journalists, informed the masses that these individuals were the citizens of Pakistan and were never involved in blasphemy. However, some media channels and these anchors started a massive hate campaign against them without giving the second view. The life of these bloggers and their families was put into great danger.
But, these anchors and journalist continued with their malicious campaign and fueled hatred against bloggers and their families. It was alleged that these bloggers were attached with a blasphemous Facebook and Twitter page ‘Bhensa’ without telling people the actual names of critical blogs ran by these persons. Even at that time, no efforts were made to investigate as to who was actually behind the blasphemous page ‘Bhensa’.
Even the media person who tried to present a true picture that these bloggers were Pakistani citizens and were never attached to any instance of blasphemy were attacked and termed blasphemers and ‘kaafirs’ by these agenda-driven anchors and journalists.
A full-fledged campaign was run against those media channels and their managements which tried to present a true picture of the bloggers Salman Haider, Ahmad Waqas Goraya and Asim Saeed.
This didn’t stop here. Later other professional journalists who wrote critical stories were also dubbed ‘Bhensa’ page administrators in order to fix them and to silence such voices. But, the most important thing is that no order has been passed to date by any court or authority to find out as to who is behind spreading this false propaganda and levelling false allegations of blasphemy against these bloggers.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), when ordered by the Islamabad High Court (IHC), probed the matter and reported that no evidence whatsoever regarding any link to any blasphemous material on internet was found against any of these bloggers.
On the court directions, the FIA is now probing as to who was running the blasphemous pages and has collected a lot of material. However, the most crucial point remains unaddressed – no order has been passed so far to probe as to who spread this false information and levelled false allegations of blasphemy against these Pakistanis instead of finding our real blasphemers.
Today’s hearing at the Supreme Court Lahore registry will be crucial and it will be very helpful in exposing the real masterminds if an order is passed to investigate as to who initiated this madness and leaked fake documents to anchors and are now pressing them to stick to their fake stories so that the false propaganda can poison the minds of as many common people as possible.
