ISLAMABAD
\nThe Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday directed the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) to provide vlogger and journalist Asad Toor with details of the allegations against him in connection with a summons issued by the agency.
\nThe agency had issued a notice to Toor on Wednesday for an inquiry into \u201calleged dissemination, transmission and\/or public exhibition of false\/fake information\u201d by him. He was directed to appear before the NCCIA Cybercrime Reporting Centre in Islamabad at 11am on July 31.
\nToor challenged the summons in the IHC on Thursday, arguing that the NCCIA had failed to fulfil the legal requirements while issuing the notice and did not provide details of the allegations levelled against him. On Friday, Justice Mohammad Azam Khan took up Toor\u2019s petition. Advocate Attaullah Kundi appeared before the court on behalf of the petitioner.
\nDuring the hearing, the court asked the petitioner\u2019s counsel, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you appear before the NCCIA? Don\u2019t you have a defence?\u201d On Wednesday, the National Press Club (NPC) had condemned the NCCIA notice to Toor, expressing alarm at the state of press freedom.
\nAsserting that the right to freedom of expression was a constitutional right, NPC leadership said, \u201cSubjecting journalists to legal pressure and retaliation for performing their professional duties or expressing critical opinions is not a good omen for any democratic society.\u201d
\nNPC urged institutions to play their respective roles in accordance with law, constitution and fundamental human rights. Free, responsible and safe journalism is the foundation of a strong democratic system,\u201d NPC said, demanding that notice be withdrawn and the \u201cconstitutional and legal rights\u201d of journalists be respected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday directed the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) to provide vlogger and journalist Asad Toor with details of the allegations against him in connection with a summons issued by the agency. The agency had issued a notice to Toor on Wednesday for an inquiry into \u201calleged dissemination, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":62974,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101096,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101076\/revisions\/101096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}