{"id":123856,"date":"2026-04-07T19:39:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/?p=123856"},"modified":"2026-04-07T19:39:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T14:39:28","slug":"lhc-grants-post-arrest-bail-to-canadian-scholar-in-cybercrime-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/","title":{"rendered":"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">LAHORE(National Times)-  The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to a Canadian national, also a Pakistani PhD scholar, in a cybercrime case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In late February, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) had registered the case against Hamza Ahmad Khan under the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.na.gov.pk\/uploads\/documents\/1470910659_707.pdf\">Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016<\/a>&nbsp;for allegedly making anti-state posts on social media platforms X and Instagram.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After being&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1976198\">denied<\/a>&nbsp;post-arrest&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1975522\">bail<\/a>&nbsp;by a judicial magistrate and a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1976704\">sessions court<\/a>, Hamza had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1987027\/canadian-national-moves-lhc-for-bail\">approached the LHC<\/a>&nbsp;for the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Taking up the case today, Justice Muhammad Waheed Khan allowed the bail petition, subject to furnishing surety bonds of Rs200,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Earlier, Advocate Asad Jamal appeared before the court on behalf of the petitioner and completed his arguments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bail petition contended that the sequence of events raised doubts about the legality and transparency of the investigation against the petitioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The lawyer argued that the case against the petitioner was false and manufactured with the malicious intent to rope him into unjust and unfair legal proceedings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He argued that the petitioner had not committed any criminal act under the law and that the case against the petitioner was based on dishonesty and devoid of any merit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The counsel asserted that the grant of bail is a right and refusal is an exception in such cases, especially when the prosecution is not conclusively equipped with evidence to bring the alleged case against the petitioner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He asked the court to release the petitioner on bail as there was \u201cno likelihood\u201d that he would tamper with the evidence which has already been collected by the prosecution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hamza had arrived in Pakistan to work on his PhD thesis on February 13 and was staying in Phase 10 of Lahore\u2019s Defence Housing Authority (DHA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The complainant stated that Hamza left the house between 1am and 2am on February 19 after booking a ride to go somewhere and did not return. He said his friends were unable to trace his whereabouts despite searching for him on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hamza had&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1975216\/canadian-national-who-went-missing-in-lahore-turns-up-in-nccia-custody\">turned up<\/a>&nbsp;in NCCIA custody on February 23, a day after a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dawn.com\/news\/1974811\/kidnapping-case-registered-against-unidentified-suspects-after-canadian-national-reportedly-goes-missing-in-lahore\">kidnapping case<\/a>&nbsp;was filed against unidentified suspects over Hamza allegedly going missing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAHORE(National Times)- The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to a Canadian national, also a Pakistani PhD scholar, in a cybercrime case. In late February, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) had registered the case against Hamza Ahmad Khan under the&nbsp;Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016&nbsp;for allegedly making anti-state posts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case - Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case - Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"LAHORE(National Times)- The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to a Canadian national, also a Pakistani PhD scholar, in a cybercrime case. In late February, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) had registered the case against Hamza Ahmad Khan under the&nbsp;Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act (Peca) 2016&nbsp;for allegedly making anti-state posts [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-04-07T14:39:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-04-07T14:39:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/image-670x370-31-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"670\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"370\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"humza Jahangir\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"humza Jahangir\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/\",\"name\":\"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case - Nation\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/image-670x370-31-1.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-04-07T14:39:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-04-07T14:39:28+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/27efa35fa76e99f3ad7e7397d7332c16\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/image-670x370-31-1.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/image-670x370-31-1.png\",\"width\":670,\"height\":370},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/\",\"name\":\"Nation\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/27efa35fa76e99f3ad7e7397d7332c16\",\"name\":\"humza Jahangir\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/43feedd99bd6a90080d1621b7e6604364acb673ee979d3ffe5075557c14c68b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/43feedd99bd6a90080d1621b7e6604364acb673ee979d3ffe5075557c14c68b9?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"humza Jahangir\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/author\/humza\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case - Nation","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2026\/123856\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"LHC grants post-arrest bail to Canadian scholar in cybercrime case - Nation","og_description":"LAHORE(National Times)- The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Tuesday granted post-arrest bail to a Canadian national, also a Pakistani PhD scholar, in a cybercrime case. 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