Karachi: The Sindh High Court (SHC) Wednesday directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) chairman to ensure any obscene material uploaded or about to be uploaded from Pakistan on the website YouTube was screened and blocked immediately.

“In case such material remains available on the website or is uploaded in future from Pakistan, we will hold responsible PTA officials, who shall be exposed to criminal prosecution,” ordered an SHC division bench comprising Justice Amir Hani Muslim and Justice Zakir Hussain. The order came on a petition filed against the project director of the National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes and the FIA additional director for not taking action against a man accused of cyber crime.

The petitioner submitted that the accused, Faheem Mughal, fraudulently obtained pictures of his 16-year-old daughter from the mobile phone of his 12-year-old son. The petitioner claimed that Mughal then prepared a video using reproduced images adding objectionable features, and uploaded it on YouTube, ruining the life of his daughter. He alleged that despite lodging complaints with the FIA and Cyber Crime police station, the accused was neither arrested nor the obscene video removed from the website.

He said that an Intelligence Bureau (IB) Inspector Babar Shah was forcing the local police not to register his FIR. On Monday, the Mirpurkhas DPO produced Mughal in the court. The bench directed Mughal to execute a personal bond in the sum of Rs 100,000 with the SHC nazir for appearing in court on each date of hearing.