Pakistan is one of the few countries where a woman who is victim of harassment has to fight not only the culprits but also with the institutes responsible for providing her justice.
There are countless such cases where the victim was forced to withdraw her case because victim shaming and delayed justice were only adding to her sufferings.
Recently, a case of online harassment has appeared where justice was served after 5 years only because the victim chose not to give up and continued fighting.
The victim who belongs to the respectable profession of education was harassed by a fellow from the same profession and after 5 years of struggle, she has finally manged to put the culprit behind the bars.
Dr Farhan Kamrani was found guilty of harassing the female teacher by creating a fake Facebook account in her name. The convict is a former assistant professor from the psychology department of the University of Karachi.
The vicitm lodged a complaint with the FIA in 2016 that Kamrani had set up a fake social media profile impersonating her. The culprit also posted a link to the fake profile on the page of Greenwich University which contained fake pornographic pictures of the victim.
Federal Investigation Agency reached the social media website for help and traced the accused to his residence. They also found evidence on his laptop that the Facebook account in question had been used on this computer.
An FIR was registered and the assistant professor was finally arrested under Section 21 of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016.
But can the institutes be credited for justice served this delayed?
First fake account of victim was created in 2015 and FIA acted after her FOURTH complaint to them in 2016. She filed an anonymous complaint with the FIA, they traced the culprit, arrested him.
But in a bizarre sequence of coincidences, the FIA “lost” the police evidence file, and retained no copy before the case even went to trial.
Throughout, the complainant had to rely on legal help by private counsels because the FIA failed to guide and assist her.
The complainant also filed multiple petitions before the Sindh High Court regarding delays in trials. Despite High Court’s directions, FIA kept delaying the investigation and all this time, the culprit continued to harass her.
This went on for nearly five years which is easy said then being continuously harassed, taunted and turned away.
Yes he has been charged under three sections of the law and imprisoned for 8 years. But he has already served the punishment while under trial due to delays by the FIA and on this ground he obtained bail.
After multiple bail rejections, in 2019 he was granted bail because he had completed the statutory period under the law and yet the trial had not concluded.
So Bail became a right. The culprit, after harassing the fellow teacher all along, will serve no more jail time.
It is almost impossible to call it justice when the culprit’s punishment is over even before it began and victims are not shielded from FIA misconduct which continues over years without any accountability.
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