KARACHI: A day after arresting 273 suspeets in a raid on an ‘illegal’ call centre on Sharea Faisal, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) released as many as 98 women and an unspecified number of juvenile boys who were employed as call agents on the order of a judicial magistrate on Thursday.
On Nov 4, the NCCIA had raided an office premises in connection with anongoing enquiry into an alleged international financial fraud network and arrested as many as 273 suspects, including women, in a case pertaining to the theft of credit card data through ‘spoofed calls’.
On Thursday, the investigating officer (IO) of the case appeared before Judicial Magistrate (East) Gulraiz Memon and submitted a Sindh home department notification declaring the call centre premises a sub-jail.
He informed the court that, owing to security risks and the movement of 273 suspects, he could not produce them physically in court. The court directed the IOto produce the suspects via video link.
When the suspects were produced, the judge pointed out that some of them appeared to be underage persons. The IO informed the court that their ages needed to be determined.
The officer also informed the court that he required physical custody of only nine suspects, including the owners, while the remaining suspects should be sent to prison on judicial remand.
At this, defence counsel Shahab Sarki submitted that, according to his information, most of the suspects were women orunderage. He maintained that under the juvenile justice law, minors could not be kept in jail and should be released on bail as the offences were minor in nature.
He argued that the female suspects should also be granted bail under the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Another defence counsel, Ali Akbar Poonawala, submitted the B-Forms of two suspects and requested the court to grant them bail, as they were covered by the Juvenile Justice System Act.
After hearing the arguments and examining aspects of the case, the court granted bail to 98 female suspects and juvenile male suspects, subject to verification of their ages through National Database and Registration Authority records, against surety bonds of Rs5,000 each.
It remanded the nine suspects in NCCIA custody for further questioning, while the remaining male suspects were sent to prison on judicial remand.
NCCIA presser Earlier, NCCIA Additional Director Shahzad Akbar told a press conference that the call centre was allegedly used in fraudulent activities targeting foreignnationals through impersonation, identity misuse and caller ID spoofing.
He saidinitialinvestigationsindicated that the facility was allegedly operating under the pretext of providing debt validation services.
‘Personnel associated with the operation reportedly impersonated representatives of foreign banking institutions and debt validation service providers, contactingindividuals abroad and offering assistance in the verification and validation of their outstanding financial obligations,’ he stated.
The NCCIA official said investigators had established ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect that the alleged scheme was designed to induce victims into disclosing sensitive personal and financial information, including Social Security Numbers and payment card credentials.
He said preliminary findings further suggested that the information obtained was subsequently exploited to facilitate unauthorised financial transactions through merchant accounts.
Theproceedsgeneratedthroughthese transactions were reportedly transferred to Pakistan through company accounts and remittance channels, indicating possible cross-border movement of illicit funds, he said.
He said a case was registered under Sections3(unauthorised access toinformation system or data), 4 (unauthorised copying or transmission of data), 13 (electronic forgery), 14 (electronic fraud), 16 (unauthorised use of identity information) and 26 (spoofing) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act,2016 (Peca).
The suspects’ relatives and local residents staged a protest against the raid and arrests near the Baloch Colony Bridge on Sharea Faisal, disrupting the smooth flow of traffic along Karachi’s main artery.
The demonstrators protested the arrest of around 100 women from the call centre, claiming that their children worked there and had no involvement in illegal activities, demanding the suspects’ immediate release.