Arsalan Saeed alias Mikram Saeed and Kamal Anwar, both of Faisalabad, Punjab, were apprehended by the Federal Investigation Agency of Pakistan on Thursday in connection with the suicide case of an 18-year-old girl in the United States of America.
Both were accused of posting inappropriate videos and photographs of a teenage American girl on social media, which led to her suicide. The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has requested information on the two suspects from the relevant US department.
The girl had exchanged explicit photographs of herself with someone she met online when she was 16 years old. The person was Mikram Saeed. For the next two years, the girl was pursued and harassed by Saeed and his aide in Pakistan, until she committed suicide on March 3, 2021, at her home in Lisbon, St. Lawrence County.
The girl wrote in her suicide letter that she made a mistake and that she was sorry but that she couldn’t do it any longer.
According to a police investigation in the United States, the blackmailers threatened to publish those images of her and subsequently did so on social media platforms. The US Embassy informed the FIA that both suspects were involved in the blackmailing and “sextortion” of a woman of New York’s Lisbon town on Facebook, which led to her death.
“Both suspects have been arrested on the information provided by the US Embassy for their alleged involvement in sharing objectionable videos and pictures of 17-year-old New York girl Shylynn Dixon among her friends on social media (Facebook) that made her to commit suicide,” Pakistani newspaper Dawn wrote quoting FIA cybercrime chief Babur Bakht Qureshi.
When asked if the FIA would send up the suspects to US authorities, Qureshi responded, “They will not be extradited as we will try them here. Our law is very strict on such crime and they will surely be convicted for their alleged crime.”