ISLAMABAD: The district and sessions court of Islamabad on Monday directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to register a case against Cynthia Dawn Ritchie, a Pakistan-based US blogger who accused former minister of interior Rehman Malik of raping her in 2011.
The blogger, 44, who is residing in Pakistan since 2009, got herself involved in a dogfight last month when she levelled indecent allegations against slain prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Twitter. Ritchie followed up her tweets with a string of allegations against top Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leadership, including former premier Yousaf Raza Gilani and former ministers Rehman Malik and Makhdoom Shahabuddin.
Additional District and Sessions Judge Jahangir Awan, while taking up the petition of PPP Islamabad chapter President Raja Shakeel Abbasi against Ritchie, directed FIA to register a case against the accused.
Abbasi had approached the court last Saturday after police refused to lodge a first information report (FIR) against Ritchie. In his petition, Abbasi stated that the blogger had made “baseless allegations” against Bhutto and sought legal action against her under Section 22-A of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). During the hearing, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) expressed its inability to proceed against Ritchie, saying the authority lacked the jurisdiction to proceed against an individual over a tweet.
The PTA, however, suggested that in case there is any criminality related to Ritchie’s official social media accounts then there is a cybercrime wing of the FIA to handle this.
Earlier, the FIA opposed registration of FIR in this matter and claimed that the petitioner had no locus standi to become complainant in the mater for invoking the provisions of the Prevention of Electronic Crime Act, 2016.
According to the act, the “bare reading of the law would reveal that only an aggrieved neutral person or his guardian can lodge a complaint. The right provided in subsection (2) to the aggrieved person or his guardian, in case the aggrieved person is a minor for applying the authority for removal of contents further substantiate that in the case under discussion, the law can be set in motion only on the complaint of either an aggrieved ‘natural person’ or his guardian”.
