LAHORE: A bird seller in Lahore never imagined that selling a few parrots would leave him unable to access his own money.
In early April, sixty-year-old Nadeem Nasir discovered that his bank account had been blocked after repeated failed transactions. When he visited his bank, he was told the FIA Cyber Crime Wing in Islamabad had ordered the freeze.
The bank declined to share a copy of the directive.
“I was shocked,” Nasir told The News over the phone. “What crime had I committed?”
After days of unanswered calls to FIA offices in Islamabad, he eventually spoke to an official in FIA’s Lahore office who asked whether he knew a journalist based in Islamabad.
He did. But only because he had sold parrots to this journalist, who has published reports and commentary critical of state institutions.
The following day, that journalist also learned that both his and his mother’s bank accounts had been frozen without any prior notice. Over recent years, the journalist has faced arrests and physical assaults due to his independent reporting. Last year, the FIA accused him of running a purportedly “malicious” online campaign against judges of the Supreme Court.
Finally in May, after more than a month without access to his earnings, the Islamabad High Court ordered that the journalist’s account be restored.
During the hearing, Justice Khadim Hussain Soomro asked the government’s counsel to explain the basis for the freeze. In response, the government’s counsel submitted a single-page reply from the FIA’s Cyber Crime Wing.
The document, seen by The News, stated that an investigation was underway into the journalist’s “anti-state and anti-government posts” and funds generated through different social media accounts. It also claimed to be examining possible “traces of money laundering and terror funding”. But the court’s ruling was pointed in its language. It noted that no prior notice had been issued to the journalist, nor was he granted an opportunity to respond to the allegations before his bank account was frozen.
“Such action, undertaken without due process amounts to a blatant violation of fundamental rights,” the judge wrote.
The journalist’s lawyer, Zainab Janjua, called the accusations baseless and described the investigation as an attempt to intimidate independent reporting.
“The ridiculous nature of the allegations coupled with the manner in which FIA has purportedly been conducting this inquiry shows that it is nothing but another tool of the state agencies to penalise independent journalists for doing their job,” she said.
While his accounts were unfrozen by a court order, Nasir’s account remains inaccessible months later. He is not the only one affected.
Atif Sajjad Raza, who runs a media production house, and Rozi Khan, another bird seller, have also discovered that their bank accounts were frozen without formal notice.
Each had at some point conducted financial transactions with the same journalist.
In his petition to the Islamabad High Court, Raza detailed that he was directed by the FIA to submit an affidavit, stating that he “does not share the political views” of the journalist, if he wanted to have his bank account unblocked.
Another independent journalist based in Islamabad had a similar story. In April, the bank accounts of his wife and sister were also blocked without warning. He too had faced arrest, abduction, and terrorism charges due to his reporting over the years.
According to him, the FIA verbally cited an inquiry into alleged money laundering against him but never provided official documentation. The accounts were restored only after intervention by his brother, who is a lawyer.
The News contacted the National Cybercrime Investigation Agency, which assumed responsibility for cyber-related investigations from the FIA in April. Despite multiple messages to the agency’s additional director, Hasan Mehmood Satti, and to its spokesperson, Najeeb ul Hassan, both promised to respond but had not done so by the time this report was filed.
The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly classified Pakistan as among the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists, where such practices often pass without consequence.
Iqbal Khattak, the executive director of Freedom Network, a media development and civil liberties organisation in Islamabad, said the freezing of accounts appeared to be part of a broader effort by the state to discourage critical reporting.
“This is a new tool being used against independent journalists to mentally exhaust them,” Khattak said.
Meanwhile, Nasir remains in limbo. With a wife undergoing cancer treatment and recent medical expenses of his own, he says he has had to rely on others’ bank accounts to pay for urgent needs.
“What is my crime?” he asked. “Why am I being punished?”
