A Karachi court has sentenced a man to six years in prison for creating a woman’s fake Facebook accounts and uploading her objectionable pictures to harass and blackmail her for refusing his proposal.Judicial Magistrate (East) Yusra Ashfaq convicted Abdullah Saleem under sections 20 (offences against dignity of a natural person), 21 (offences against modesty of a natural person or minor), and 24 (cyber stalking) of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (PECA) 2016, awarding him two years’ imprisonment and imposing a fine of Rs30,000 on each count.The judgment, which was given on September 19, 2025, said that the complainant and the convict were in a relationship, but the woman called it off because of his anger issues. Saleem became “frustrated” after she declined his marriage proposal, and he declared: “If she could not be his, he would not let her be anyone else’s.”The court began hearing the case after the FIR was registered in 2021.Case detailsThe complainant had filed a complaint against the suspect over “harassment, intimidation, blackmail, and circulation of her objectionable pictures through fake social media accounts,” according to the judgment.The woman said that she had a relationship with the suspect during which he “managed to obtain her personal and private pictures.” After their relationship deteriorated, the suspect allegedly uploaded her “nude and objectionable pictures on Facebook, tagged her family members, and also threatened her with further exposure unless she acceded to his demands”.
The woman also said that the suspect continued to harass her through WhatsApp and Facebook, which caused her “immense mental agony and social humiliation”.In her testimony to the court, the complainant said that she was friends with the convict and they were in an informal engagement, but it broke down due to his alleged “anger issues and inappropriate behaviour.” Once she broke it off, he resorted to making a fake Facebook profile of the woman, uploading objectionable pictures, and tagging her family members. The photographs were posted between July 23, 2021, to July 26, 2021.
During the investigation, the police recovered two mobile phones, Samsung A72 and Samsung S20,+ which were submitted to the Digital Forensic Laboratory, Karachi, on September 24, 2021. The forensic department found that the fake Facebook profile was linked to A72, while on S20+, the IP logs traced the registration in the name of Salman Saleem, the father of the convict, and his residential address. Nude and objectionable pictures of the complainant and screenshots of threatening and harassing WhatsApp messages were also found on the devices.Saleem had, however, pleaded not guilty and claimed he was falsely implicated. The judgment notes that the defence attempted to undermine the credibility of the complainant by emphasizing that she had not produced the relatives to whom the fake friend requests were allegedly sent, adding that the convict had even agreed to hand over his mobile phone to the investigation authorities.
