Case against IT company Aptech

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) judge, Justice Arshad Hussain, has accepted the interim bail of former in-charge Cyber Crime Cell, Karachi, Abdul Ghaffar, in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Circle.

On the other hand, an interesting revelation was made in a case registered by Cyber Crime Cell against Aptech that the investigation officer (IO) of the case, assistant director, Shahryar, was an employee of the same IT company, which was shut down by the FIA after registering a case. When the IO was contacted and asked for a copy of the FIR, interestingly, he replied that he did not have the FIR’s copy, saying to get it from deputy director, Shahbaz. It may be mentioned that the case 9/2021 was registered on March 30 and Shahryar was deputed as the IO. The assistant director said he was not an employee of the IT company but worked at a private TV channel that was one of its subsidiary companies. It is worth mentioning that an FIR 5/2021 was registered against deputy director FIA, Abdul Ghaffar, owner and employees of Aptech, in which the FIA official was accused of receiving millions of rupees through blackmailing, harassing and the company, while the owner, Zenum Balwani and other employees for giving bribe, though there was no written or verbal evidence of it. After that, Aptech was raided and a case was registered on March 30, 2021. As many as 23 people were indicted in the case, including two female employees of the IT company. The FIR said the investigation was started after the intelligence agency’s report “Operation against International Scams”, in which five IT companies were nominated, including Aptech. Deputy Director FIA, Abdul Ghaffar, had raided a company, named DiGitonics, arresting some accused and registered a case against them. After that, the deputy director was continuously asking permission to raid Aptech but was not permitted and later he was transferred.

Assistant Director FIA,Shahryar became the in-charge of the case and he raided Aptech and registered a case against it. Due to insufficient evidence in the case, father and brother of an accused were detained for several hours and pressurised for giving statements against Aptech. It is pertinent to mention that when the Cyber Crime Cell started its investigation against five IT companies, there was a propaganda that a former owner of an IT company, who had then been running his private TV channel, was behind the raids because his former employees started their own IT companies after the said IT company was closed down.