KARACHI: A judicial magistrate in Karachi handed down a collective sentence of nine years to a man after finding him guilty of sharing sexually explicit videos and pictures of a woman with her in-laws on a WhatsApp group, it emerged on Friday.
Judicial Magistrate (East) Gulraiz Memon sentenced the convict, Ammad Husain, on three counts in the case that was registered with the Federal Investigation Agency’s cybercrime wing under Section 20 (dignity of natural persons), 21 (modesty of natural persons or minor), 24 (cyberstalking) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016.
Husain was handed a three-year prison sentence for each count, and all three sentences will run concurrently.
The court also fined him a total of Rs135000 and directed him to pay another Rs1 million to the victim in compensation. In case of failure to pay the fine or the compensation, he will have to serve additional imprisonment.
In his judgement, Judicial Magistrate Memon observed regarding the motive of the crime that upon the victim’s refusal to continue “physical connection”, the convict “got annoyed and displayed the illicit videos to take revenge on the victim and her family”.
“This is a classic example of patriarchal, facile masculinity and misogynistic approach prevailing in this society where the pendulum of male domination of the public has been violent, contested and culturally visible, especially in the given circumstances of this case, where a male cannot swallow [a] ‘NO’ to his demands,” the judge said.
“Unfortunately, or/and misfortunately, there is no contemplation toward the wish and desire of a woman … A consent to talk or share some personal space with a male person, without going into its legitimacy, does not mean at all that that personal space be violated and publicly shared without her consent. Because ‘NO’ always remains ‘NO’ and no one can make a woman feel inferior without her consent,” the judge observed.
He emphasised that “our government must take serious steps to [address] such problems by educating the public at large while our civil society should enhance their capabilities to reach the masses and [make them] aware effectively, while from my side, it should be pacified by giving the culprits harsher retributive penalties”.
For his part, Federal Investigation Agency prosecutor Sheraz Rajpar had contended before the court that the victim and the convict had relations and that the latter had blackmailed the former and tried to pressure her into having relations with his friends as well.
However, when the complainant refused to comply with his demands and informed her husband, the convict shared her explicit videos with her family and in-laws on a family Whatsapp group.
Meanwhile, the defence counsel contended that his client was falsely implicated in the case.
He alleged that the forensic report had been “manipulated and forged”, as it remained silent on with whom and when the videos were shared. This raised doubts on the prosecution’s stance, he argued.
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