[Pakistan] Electronic Crime Unit to be set up

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

[from Comp-list mailing list]


Electronic Crime Unit to be set up
The News, By A H Khanzada
5/12/2003
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/may2003-daily/12-05-
2003/metro/k3.htm
  

KARACHI: An Electronics Crimes Unit (ECU) will be established soon in 
Sindh Police Department to deal with the cyber and electronics 
crimes. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) Sindh, Syed Kamal Shah 
has issued orders to this effect, without taking any proper 
arrangement, sources disclosed.  

Electronics and cyber crimes are the yield of high tech-era, which 
must be dealt with the same sort of expertise and sophistication, to 
unearth crimes, fix the responsibilities, and to make headway. It is 
very necessary for persons who are investigating the cases of 
electronics and cyber crimes that they should know each and every 
technicality of the subject like an expert.  

Sindh police chief's order for setting-up the ECU, appears a mere lip-
service. Without cyber cops, cyber judges, cyber advocates, etc one 
wonders how cyber criminals would be arrested, and how investigations 
would be conducted to nab the accused persons.  

It has yet to be decided who would conduct hearing of cyber crime 
cases and who would be competent to decide them, or whether the 
person implicated is indeed involved in the crime or not.  

Reports indicate that in the history of Pakistan, there had been only 
three cases of cyber crime reported so far. Two of these cases were 
investigated by the defunct Crimes Branch of Sindh Police, and the 
third one was a very high profile case, in which a US journalist 
Daniel Pearl was reportedly kidnapped and later assassinated by 
unknown persons. Later, some accused persons including a British 
national were arrested in this case as their involvement was detected 
purely through high-tech means.  

Although the case of the US journalist Daniel Pearl was decided by 
the learned court, the persons who had been implicated in the crime 
earlier by the police through cyber means, were the same who were 
sentenced by the court.  

If any investigator were to look deeply into these cases he would see 
on technical grounds that the evidences gathered by the police 
investigators in the Daniel Pearl case were not sufficient enough to 
fix the responsibilities on the accused persons.  

Technical evidences must be examined in the light of Articles 6 and 7 
of the Evidence Act, under which condition a question would be raised 
whether the evidences presented before the court in the Daniel Pearl 
case were justified or not. It might be the government policy, but it 
remains a fact that gathering and presentation and acceptance of 
evidences were not smooth and transparent.  

Clearly, the police officials who investigated the crime were not 
bearing any expertise to deal with cyber crimes at all. Whatever the 
learned court had decided, is acceptable to all but one question 
remains very pertinent about the validity of the investigation itself 
which had been carried out without properly-trained officials, who 
were certainly not cyber cops in this case. Moreover, the court which 
examined the case was not presided by a cyber judge, which was 
certainly a need of the case.  

It should be recalled here that so far no legislation had been 
enacted in the country to deal with cases of cyber crimes. It is also 
worth mentioning here that few multinational banks operating in 
Pakistan had offered their services time and again to the high police 
officials for training and provision of the equipment required to 
deal with the cyber crimes. More than half a dozen meetings in this 
connection were held with the former IGP Aftab Nabi, but they yielded 
no result.  

Sources close to fraud control units of the different multinational 
banks disclosed that they had also approached the IGP Syed Kamal 
Shah, but to no avail. Now, the orders for establishing the ECU were 
given in writing by none other than the IGP Sindh himself to his 
subordinates who are undergoing the course of proper formalities, but 
their implementation has yet to materialise.