The Islamabad High Court on Tuesday launched contempt proceedings over leaked personal details of Justice Babar Sattar.
The contempt notice came as matters pertaining to the interference of institutions in judicial affairs escalated, with Justice Sattar informing IHC Chief Justice Aamer Farooq through a letter about how he was told to back off from hearing a case on alleged audios of calls of former first lady Bushra Bibi and former chief justice of Pakistan Saqib Nisar's son, Najam Saqib.
Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, in an order issued on Tuesday, directed the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority, the cybercrime wing of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), the director general of the FIA, the director general of passports at the Bureau of Immigration of the FIA, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), the Federal Board of Revenue, heads of information technology/5G warfare wings of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence and counter-terrorism department of the police, to provide details on the online campaign run against Justice Sattar.
During the social media and media campaign, personal details about Justice Sattar were leaked to the public, including copies of his Green Card, his passport, and his travel history. Moreover, details of his property holdings and other private details of his family members were also published.
In a subsequent press release, Justice Sattar had confirmed and clarified the details but had also termed their release a malicious campaign.
The notice said hashtags "WillBabarSattarAnswer" and "Foreign Munsif Namanzoor" were used as part of the campaign during which his personal information was leaked. The account of "Pakistan Lawyers Forum" was also identified as one of the key accounts part of the campaign.
Justice Kayani directed FIA's cyber crime wing, heads of ISI, IB, MI and counter-terrorism departments to independently scrape data of the hashtags and accounts identified and plot the data for analysis of all tweets, retweets and users for each trending hashtags, duplicated content in tweets and retweets, identities of the original hashtag account owners, identities of five accounts with the largest number of tweets and retweets and time span from the first tweet to the last before the hashtag became trending.
PEMRA was told to submit a report about the first, second, and third channels, which include details of Justice Sattar and the editorial approvals sought to run the information to be aired, and an analysis by PEMRA over any possible breach of the code of conduct.
Justice Kayani further sought a report on how and through whom the travelling documents with photographs of the judge and his family were leaked.
The court gave the authorities a week, until May 21, to submit their reports.