Karachi University's assistant professor sent to jail for harassing female colleague online

• KU's Dr Farhan Kamrani sent to prison for a total of eight years.
• He has been found guilty of harassing a female teacher by creating a fake Facebook account in her name.
• District and Sessions Judge (East) also slaps the convict with a fine worth Rs1.1 million.

KARACHI: An assistant professor from the University of Karachi was sentenced to eight years in prison after a city court convicted him of harassing a female colleague on a social media website, The News reported Thursday.

Dr Farhan Kamrani of the Department of Psychology was found guilty of harassing a female teacher by creating a fake Facebook account in her name.

District and Sessions Judge (East) Khalid Hussain Shahani also slapped the convict with a fine worth Rs1.1 million, while a failure to pay would result in additional imprisonment.

The judge, as he pronounced the verdict, revoked the bail granted to Kamrani, following which he was was arrested from the courtroom and remanded to jail, where he will begin serving his sentence.

The victim, in a complaint lodged with the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in 2016, had said that someone had posted a link to a profile on the page of the Greenwich University containing her fake pornographic pictures.

Following the complaint, the FIA had sought the social media website’s help and traced the accused to his residence, as well as found evidence on his laptop that the Facebook account in question had been used on this computer, special public prosecutor Zakir Hussain said during the hearing.

Defence counsel Ahsanullah Khan, however, objected to the charge and said that the prosecution’s story carried loopholes because the laptop was neither sent for a forensic analysis nor presented in the court as evidence.

He claimed that his client was falsely implicated in the case.

Concluding the trial, the judge said that the prosecution had successfully established its case against the accused, while he, on the other hand, had failed to prove his innocence.

The court awarded three years’ imprisonment to the accused of committing an offence punishable under Section 21 (offences against modesty of a natural person and minor) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act.

The court awarded another three years’ term to him for an offence punishable under Section 419 (punishment for cheating by personation) and two years’ term for an offence punishable under Section 500 (punishment for defamation) of the Pakistan Penal Code.