The caretaker federal government Tuesday formed a joint investigation team (JIT) to investigate a \u201cmalicious\u201d social media campaign launched against the Supreme Court of Pakistan\u2019s judges. \u201cThe federal government has been pleased to constitute a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) in terms of Section 30 of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016,\u201d the notification from the Ministry of Interior read. The notification said that the six-member inter-institution probe team will be headed by the Federal Investigation Agency\u2019s Additional Director General (Cyber Crime Wing). Moreover, it will include senior officials from the Intelligence Bureau (IB), Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), DIG Islamabad Capital Territory Police, and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. A co-opted official will also be a member. The team comprising senior officials has been tasked to ascertain facts behind malicious social media campaigns attempting to \u201cmalign the image of honourable judges of the Supreme Court of Pakistan\u201d, the notification said. \u201cTo identify and bring the culprits to book in accordance with relevant laws and cause presentation of challans in the concerned courts,\u201d the official document stated. The team has also been asked to recommend measures for prevention against the occurrence of such incidents in the future and submit a preliminary report to the Ministry of Interior within a fortnight (14 days). The decision comes after the top court passed a verdict that wasn\u2019t in favour of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). The order of the top court was severely criticised. While addressing a press conference earlier in the day in Islamabad, Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) and Supreme Court Bar Council (SCBA) officeholders demanded action against those responsible for running a campaign targeting Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Qazi Faez Isa. The officer bearers of the bodies said the PTA and FIA should take \u201cstrict action\u201d against such elements. SCBA President Shahzad Shaukat said his body stands with the apex court\u2019s judges, noting that their decisions could be criticised, but shouldn\u2019t be personally maligned. \u201cLawyers will not tolerate criticism of judges. When the order mentions that it [PTI] did not hold elections, then [why the hue and cry].\u201d PBC Vice President Haroon Ur Rasheed said if there was a flaw in the apex court\u2019s decision, then it should be brought forward. \u201cThe PTI barred its own members from participating in intra-party elections; I plead with lawyers and the nation to criticise the verdict but not to ridicule the judges.\u201d Hasan Raza Pasha, the chairman of the PBC\u2019s Executive Committee, said PTI\u2019s lawyers were not prepared for the nine-hour-long hearing. He, however, noted that it was the party\u2019s right to file an appeal against the decision. \u201cOne side of this decision is moral and the other legal: morally, the PTI should have been given the bat symbol; however, legally it was not possible to get relief without holding intra-party elections.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The caretaker federal government Tuesday formed a joint investigation team (JIT) to investigate a \u201cmalicious\u201d social media campaign launched against the Supreme Court of Pakistan\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13232,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}