Karachi woman arrested on cyber crime charges

KARACHI: The Federal Investigation Agency’s (FIA) Cyber Crime Wing on Wednesday arrested a woman on charges of involvement in cybercrime activities by using an illegal gateway.

According to a spokesman for FIA’s Sindh chapter, the raid was conducted by FIA Cybercrime Karachi along with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) officials on directions issued by the deputy director of the cyber wing to unearth illegal gateway exchange, causing a huge loss to the national exchequer.

The raid was carried out on a house in Nazimabad No 2 during which the teams seized illegal equipment including seven gateways, a sixteen ports device, a TP-link router, three laptops, internet USB and 175 SIMs.

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A woman, identified as Sidra Kaleem, was found running the business on the spot. Kaleem was arrested and an FIR was registered against her and others under sections 13, 14, 16 and 17 of the PECA 2016 read with Section 31 of the Pak Telecom (Re-organisation) Act 1996 read with sections 420 and 109 of the PPC.

The FIA spokesperson further said it was the first time a woman was found to be operating an illegal operation. It was highly likely that there were others involved in this illegal VoIP business. He added that raids were in progress to make arrests in order to capture Amir Zaman, Ali Asfi, Sajood and other suspects involved in this case.