By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency went to the Supreme Court on Monday to do something unusual: ask the country’s highest tribunal to undo its own order.
The agency filed a petition seeking to recall a May 12 directive in which the Supreme Court had instructed the Islamabad High Court to rule within two weeks on requests to suspend the sentences of Imaan Zainab Mazari-Hazir and Hadi Ali Chattha — a husband and wife, both lawyers, who have been imprisoned since January under a sweeping cybercrime conviction that has drawn condemnation from rights organizations, journalists, and opposition politicians alike.
By the time the NCCIA filed that petition on Monday, the Supreme Court’s own deadline had already come and gone. And the Islamabad High Court, rather than rule on the matter, adjourned it again — this time at the prosecution’s request, with two of three members of the special prosecution team absent from the courtroom.
The case has become one of Pakistan’s most closely watched legal dramas, touching on questions of judicial independence, press freedom, and the reach of the country’s Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act, known as Peca.
The NCCIA’s petition asked the Supreme Court to withdraw its May 12 order, arguing that the directive had effectively granted special treatment to the couple by virtue of their standing as members of the bar. The agency contended that no extraordinary circumstances existed to justify the Supreme Court’s intervention in a matter still pending before the high court, and that the apex court had bypassed its own long-standing practice of non-interference in interlocutory proceedings.
“The issuance of ‘notice’ does not fall in the ambit of Article 185(3),” the petition argued, referring to the constitutional provision under which the couple had appealed to the Supreme Court, “as the appeal can only lie to the Supreme Court from a judgment, decree, order, or sentence of a high court.” On that basis, the agency maintained the couple’s original appeal was never properly before the Supreme Court at all.
The NCCIA also took aim at what it characterized as a broader pattern of favorable treatment. The trial court, the petition noted, had shown “restraint” even when the couple behaved in a “hostile and derogatory” manner during proceedings. Imaan and Hadi, the agency argued, were less interested in the expeditious resolution of their criminal appeals than in forcing a quick ruling on their sentence suspension applications — a distinction the petition treated as significant.
The agency further flagged remarks made by Imaan’s mother following the May 12 Supreme Court hearing, in which she said the order amounted to an acknowledgment of bias by the Islamabad High Court against her daughter. The petition called the statement damaging to institutional credibility. “Her statement is clearly creating doubts on the independence of the judiciary,” it read.
The scene at the Islamabad High Court on Monday underscored the procedural disorder surrounding the case. Justice Muhammad Azam Khan had cleared his morning calendar and skipped a mediation training session scheduled for 8:30 a.m. in order to take up the pleas. Only one of the three assigned prosecutors appeared. That prosecutor told the court that a colleague was traveling from Lahore and another was engaged before the IHC chief justice.
Justice Khan asked pointedly whether the prosecution understood that the Supreme Court had already issued directions in the matter. Advocate Riasat Ali Azad, one of the petitioners’ lawyers, noted that the Supreme Court’s two-week deadline had already lapsed. A second counsel, Faisal Siddiqui, argued that at minimum the one prosecutor in attendance at the chief justice’s court should appear after finishing those proceedings.
The lone prosecutor requested an adjournment until Thursday or the following Monday. Justice Khan, after consulting with the defense on scheduling, fixed the next hearing for Thursday, June 4. When Siddiqui pressed for a guarantee against further delays, the judge replied that repeated reminders were unnecessary — all parties, he said, were bound by the Supreme Court’s directive.
The origins of the case stretch back to August 12, 2025, when an assistant director at the NCCIA filed a complaint with the Federal Investigation Agency’s Cybercrime Reporting Centre. The complaint accused Imaan of spreading content that “propagated narratives aligned with hostile terrorist groups and proscribed organizations.” Her husband, Hadi Ali Chattha, was implicated for reposting some of her messages.
A sessions court in January handed the couple a combined sentence structured across three charges: 10 years under Section 10 of Peca for cyber terrorism, five years under Section 9 for glorifying an offense, and two years under Section 26-A for disseminating false information — totaling 17 years.
Their arrest had followed a separate incident: a protest outside the Islamabad High Court in which they were accused of manhandling the president of the IHC Bar Association. The timing and swiftness of their sentencing — one day after that arrest — prompted an outcry from legal observers, civil society groups, and members of the opposition.
The couple filed criminal appeals at the Islamabad High Court on February 7. On February 19, the high court admitted those appeals and issued notices to the respondents on their application to suspend the sentence — but declined to actually suspend it. In April, after their applications for early hearing went unscheduled for months, they carried their grievance to the Supreme Court under Article 185(3) of the Constitution.
The Supreme Court bench — Justices Shahid Waheed, Naeem Akhtar Afghan, and Shafi Siddiqui — ordered the IHC on May 12 to resolve the sentence suspension question within two weeks, while retaining the matter before itself pending that resolution.
The IHC issued notices to NCCIA officials on May 20. The following day, Justice Khan had raised a procedural objection over the absence of certified copies of the Supreme Court order, directing the defense to file them through proper channels. Once submitted, the case was set for June 1 — the date on which, once again, the hearing could not proceed.
The case is now scheduled to return to court on Thursday.
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