Faisalabad Man Awarded 17 Months' Jail Term For Sexual Harassment

Faisalabad Man Awarded 17 Months' Jail Term For Sexual Harassment
A sessions court in Faisalabad on Saturday sentenced a man to 17 months' imprisonment and fined Rs1.5 million for sexually harassing a woman.

The FIA's Cyber Crime Circle had booked the accused, Majid Zia under the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, 2016, reported Express News.

According to a spokesperson of the investigation agency, the man had shared objectionable photos of a woman on social media last year.

The FIA reportedly received thousands of complaints of cyber crime, including fraud, social media defamation, stalking, harassment, hate speech, and theft of data, during the past five years.

The cases in the cyber domain should be dealt with in collaboration with relevant agencies, as a vast majority is not educated about digital rights and are highly insensitive towards harassment in non-traditional spaces, like harassment in personal virtual space.

Read this too: The Problem Of Rape

The problem of harassment is multifaceted. A recent letter from the chairman of the HEC expressed grave concerns at a significant surge in harassment cases, unprofessional attitude, and unbecoming behaviour of faculty and students on and off campus.

The letter called for policies or action plans best suited for each HEI — to eradicate workplace harassment and provide a conducive, secure, and healthy work environment for research and debate by students, faculty and staff.

Harassment is multidimensional at the universities, takes place in an organised fashion, and is often protected by an ideological apparatus that provides legitimacy to individuals and groups whose survival is based on profiling, hate, and violence.

Also, proper education and protection of digital rights of students and employees should be guaranteed and institutional support extended to victims of non-traditional harassment, as the damage in such cases is more psychological than physical.

Students, faculty, staff, and higher education institutes should be rigourously trained and sensitised by the concerned authorities about traditional and non-traditional forms of harassment.