Only nine of 372 Peca cases shifted to NCCIA, Senate panel told
Pakistan's Senate committee learned that only 9 of 372 eligible cyber crime cases have been transferred to NCCIA despite 2025 PECA amendments granting the agency exclusive jurisdiction. Provincial police retain the vast majority of cases, mostly in Punjab.
Intelligence analysis by Llama
Pakistan's Senate panel was told that provincial police have transferred only 9 of 372 PECA cases to the new National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, despite legal amendments making the agency the sole investigator. Senators pushed back, with the committee chair ordering fresh directives to provincial IGs to move all pending cases.
Pakistan made a new rule saying one big agency, called NCCIA, should handle all cybercrime cases. But most police stations are still keeping their own cybercrime files instead of sending them over. Senators are now telling the police: please follow the rule and send those files to NCCIA.
Analysis
A Centralised Mandate, a Provincial Reality
The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act amendments of 2025 were designed to concentrate online-offence investigations under a single federal body, the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, by stripping provincial police of jurisdiction the moment PECA sections appear in a first information report. The Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting was told on Thursday that, on paper at least, the legal architecture exists. In practice, only nine of an estimated 372 eligible cases have crossed the line. All nine came from Sindh Police, according to the NCCIA briefing. The agency argued that once PECA provisions are invoked, ordinary police lose investigative authority, drawing a comparison with how Anti-Terrorism Act cases are handled by Counter-Terrorism Departments. That parallel, however, has not produced a similar flow of transfers on the ground. The province-wise breakdown underscores the imbalance: 268 of the registered PECA-related cases are in Punjab alone, followed by 47 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 21 in Sindh, 19 in Islamabad, 10 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 7 in Balochistan, and none in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Senators Push for Compliance
Senator Waqar Mehdi used the briefing to question why even under-trial Peca cases pending before courts had not been moved to the NCCIA, despite earlier committee directions. He suggested that provincial prosecution departments and advocate generals should be called to explain the delay. The NCCIA's response was procedural: officials said provincial authorities had told the agency that the remaining transfers were still under process. Committee chairman Senator Sarmad Ali then directed that fresh instructions be issued to provincial inspectors general of police, advocate generals, and other relevant authorities, mandating the handover of all pending Peca cases and requiring explanations for the delays. The episode exposes a familiar federal-provincial friction in Pakistan's law enforcement architecture, where legal changes at the centre do not automatically translate into changed behaviour in the provinces, particularly when existing caseloads and staffing assumptions are at stake.
Statistics Dispute and a Press Freedom Flashpoint
The committee also revisited concerns over social media statistics the NCCIA had previously presented. After media reports suggested the figures were inaccurate, the agency disowned them. On Thursday, an NCCIA official pushed back, saying the numbers had been drawn from Meta's publicly available transparency reports and the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, including an 83.64 per cent response rate for Pakistan and 74.78 per cent for India, which the official said could be independently verified online. A separate exchange centred on columnist Toufiq Butt, who received NCCIA notices after a complaint by the Pakistan Administrative Services Association (Punjab Chapter) president, Aman Babar, over a June 11, 2024 Nai Baat column that used the phrase "Bureau-Corrupts." The agency said no FIR had been filed and that it was only recording the writer's version. Journalists at the meeting argued that the NCCIA had no jurisdiction over newspaper content, which falls under the Press Council of Pakistan, with electronic media regulated by Pemra. The debate crystallises a broader anxiety: whether the new agency's mandate, as defined in law, will be read narrowly or stretched to cover expression that provincial and press regulators already oversee.
Key points
- Only 9 of an estimated 372 PECA cases nationwide have been transferred to the NCCIA, all from Sindh Police.
- Punjab accounts for 268 of the registered PECA-related cases, the largest share of the backlog.
- Committee chair Senator Sarmad Ali ordered fresh directives to provincial IGs to move all pending cases.
- The NCCIA defended its earlier social media statistics, saying they were drawn from Meta and PTA public reports.
- Journalists at the meeting questioned the NCCIA's jurisdiction over a complaint against columnist Toufiq Butt, arguing print content falls under the Press Council.
If the committee's fresh directives to provincial IGs and advocate generals produce a full handover, the NCCIA could quickly accumulate a national caseload that gives it the scale needed to develop genuine cyber crime expertise. The centralisation, if completed, may also produce more consistent outcomes for victims of online offences who currently face a patchwork of provincial responses.
Continued resistance from provincial police, combined with capacity questions at the NCCIA itself, could leave the 2025 amendments as law on paper only. The dispute over a newspaper column also raises the risk that the agency's mandate is interpreted broadly, drawing it into disputes over expression that the Press Council of Pakistan and Pemra were created to handle.
