Qari ‘who molested girl, blackmailed mother’ denied bail

A sessions court on Wednesday dismissed the bail application moved by an interned religious teacher who is accused of sexually harassing his 13-year-old female student and blackmailing her family.

The suspect named Qari Abdul Qadeem, who is currently in jail in judicial custody, had moved a post-arrest bail application in the court of the additional district & sessions judge (East), contending that he is innocent but ready to face the charges.

Qadeem said in his plea that the prosecution does not have any concrete evidence against him and he has been incarcerated in violation of the law and constitution, denying him his fundamental human rights.

The prosecutor, however, opposed the bail plea, arguing that the investigation is still under way and releasing the suspect on bail can dent the case. He said that the

police have already found sufficient incriminating evidence against the plaintiff.

After hearing the arguments from both sides, the judge decided against the bail application, observing that the suspect had prima facie harassed the teenage girl and could not be released at this stage of the case.

Qadeem had been arrested by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) over the complaint of a woman that he was sexually abusing her daughter and then blackmailing the mother into fulfilling his “unethical demands” with the teenager’s obscene pictures.

The complaint against the suspect had been registered on December 29, following which a team of the FIA carried out a raid in Block 3 of the Gulshan-e-Iqbal neighbourhood to arrest him, and found obscene pictures of the complainant’s minor daughter on his phone.

The mother said that she had hired Qadeem to teach the Holy Quran to her daughter, who later complained that the teacher had been molesting her and had also taken obscene pictures of her, according to the investigating officer.

The IO said that Qadeem had sent the obscene pictures of the girl to her mother on WhatsApp and threatened the family that he would circulate the photos on social media if his demands were not met.

The officer said that the mobile phone and the USB device recovered from the suspect had been technically analysed, on the basis of which the case had been established as an offence of child pornography.

The FIR of the case was registered at the FIA Cybercrime Reporting Centre Karachi under sections 22 (spamming) and 24 (legal recognition of offences committed in relation to information system) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, read with Section 109 (abetment) of the Pakistan Penal Code.