A few months ago, Ahsan Waqar and Shiza Adil, after befriending each other on Facebook, agreed to meet on a date in Gujranwala. However, that evening, Ahsan did not return home.

Much later, his family got a telephone call from unknown people that claimed his abduction and demanded Rs1.7 million in ransom.

The family, shocked, reported the incident to police.

The preliminary investigation revealed that Shiza Adil and her gang were using Facebook to abduct people for ransom. "She would befriend young boys on Facebook, invite them to meet her and later call her aides to kidnap the boy," says Shoaib Khurrum, senior police official, who probed into this case.

After being arrested, Shiza and her gang admitted that they had kidnapped two others, Ahmed Raza and Amir Sohail, and had received Rs10 million as ransom from their families.

The police recovered Rs9 million, 2 cars, cell phones and two pistols from the arrested gang that comprised of a lawyer, his wife, a policeman’s son and four others.

The police caught them after tracing their phone calls.

In a similar incident, a couple of months back, the police arrested a group of boys who were involved in kidnapping girls in Multan. In yet another recent incident, the police arrested some people that were involved in a similar crime in Hafizabad. They had demanded one million rupees as ransom.

"There’s always this element of innovation in crime," says Fasihuddin, Deputy Inspector General, Police, currently serving in Quetta. "Criminals always change their modus operandi with the passage of time to escape the clutches of law enforcement agencies," he says, adding, "With the growing technology, urbanisation, and industrialisation, the criminals are changing their methods while police continue to follow the old system of intelligence and operations."

He says, with growing technology, crime is becoming transnational and organised.

Kidnapping for ransom is a growing crime in the country. On social media, people can easily hide their identity and the law enforcement agencies are legally and logistically not equipped to nab them.

Also, picking people for a short time to extract a small amount of money has become a fashion in Karachi.

A senior police official says, women seduce rich, naive men with attractive pictures but keep their identity hidden on Facebook. He believes police must improve local intelligence to counter such crimes.

In mid-2013, Mustafa was kidnapped in Karachi in a similar manner. He became friends with Arslan on Facebook and went to meet him at a place from where he was picked up. The kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs50 million. The gang was later arrested by the police by tracking its phone calls.

"At present, there is no law on monitoring or investigating cyber crime in the country. There is a need for effective legislation and creating awareness among people about these innovative crimes," says a senior official of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA). FIA is authorized to deals with cyber crime cases pursued by the government.

He reminds that during the Pervez Musharraf regime, an ordinance, the Prevention of Electronic Crime Ordinance (PECO), was promulgated in 2007 to prevent militants and banned groups from using the Internet for their propaganda against the state, government and army -- and to protect female members of the parliament that were allegedly being harassed through phone calls and text messages.

The ordinance was re-promulgated thrice and in 2009 the government tried to pass it as an act. The opposition parties viewed this as a violation of human rights -- that would censor Internet and freedom of expression.

Across the border, in Afghanisatn, Nato forces discovered a group of Taliban posing as women to befriend soldiers on Facebook to gather intelligence about Nato operations in September 2012. They risked divulging sensitive information because of "over trusting", a social media review mentioned.

Farther away, in Kuala Lumpur, police nabbed a few Pakistanis who, allegedly, kidnapped local men they befriended on Facebook. The reports read that these Pakistanis used Facebook to find easy-to-fool targets. They used to invite them to their house or at a safe and trusted place, holding them captive and seeking ransom. In a couple of months, three such cases were reported in the area. Malaysian police apprehended four Pakistanis over one of these incidents. They were also staying illegally in Malaysia on expired visas.

"It is about criminality, which is globally increasing with the advancement of technology," says Prof Dr Muhammad Hafeez, a sociologist who teaches in the Punjab University. "New technology and new situations always create new crime -- and cyber crime is one of them."

Pakistan has to learn from China and Iran to deal with this new cyber crime. There is also a need to create awareness among people so that they do not get trapped.

The clear path for stability is having strict control on law and order situation, having a media policy, improve justice system and socio-economic conditions in general. In cases of such crimes, criminals must be dealt with an iron hand, says Hafeez. "It is easy money for individuals and a global trend to get rid of poverty and go after the greed".