A call comes to the shop. A slip is left at the factory gate. A message arrives naming your children's school. The amount is stated, and so is the deadline.

Extortion has shaped how business is done in Karachi for decades. It has receded from its worst period, but it has not disappeared, and it has moved — increasingly onto the phone and online, sometimes from people with no capacity to carry out anything they threaten.

This is a difficult subject to write about honestly, so we will be direct.

Paying does not end it

The single most important thing to understand.

A business that pays is recorded as a business that pays. The demand returns, usually larger, often from a second group who learn of the first. Many long-running extortion relationships began with one payment made to buy quiet.

We are not telling you it is easy to refuse, and nobody should pretend the decision is free of risk. But the notion that paying purchases safety is not supported by what actually happens.

What the law provides

Extortion is an offence under the Pakistan Penal Code, and demands accompanied by threats to person or property engage several provisions — extortion, criminal intimidation, and, where organised groups are involved, the Anti-Terrorism Act 1997, under which extortion connected with terrorism is triable by Anti-Terrorism Courts.

Where the demand comes by phone, message or online, it also engages the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, which brings the FIA Cyber Crime Wing into the picture — and cyber demands are, in evidential terms, the most traceable kind.

Reporting

Report it. Under-reporting is the reason extortion persists, and businesses that report as a group are considerably harder to pick off than businesses that each quietly pay.

Routes:

  • Police / FIR, at the station having jurisdiction. See how to file an FIR
  • CPLC (Citizens–Police Liaison Committee) in Karachi, which handles matters of this kind and is used to dealing with them discreetly
  • FIA Cyber Crime Wing, where the demand came electronically. See reporting online fraud and cybercrime and an FIA notice and how the agency works
  • Rangers / provincial helplines, where the situation warrants
  • Your trade association or market body, which often has an established channel and can report collectively

If the police refuse to register an FIR, that refusal has remedies — an application to the superior officer and then to the Magistrate. Do not accept a refusal as the end of the matter.

What to preserve, from the first contact

Evidence is what converts a complaint into a case:

  • The number that called, the time and duration of every call
  • Voice recordings, where you can make them lawfully
  • Messages in full, with the sender's details — do not delete anything
  • Any slip, letter or note, handled minimally and kept in a bag
  • Description of anyone who came in person, and the vehicle
  • CCTV covering the approach and the entrance — and preserve it before it overwrites, which is usually within days
  • A written log of every incident, dated, made at the time

Do not conduct your own investigation, and do not attempt to arrange a meeting to "settle" it.

Practical protection

  • Vary your routine — timings and routes, particularly for the family
  • Control who knows about cash movements; banking rather than holding cash on the premises removes the most common motive
  • Review premises security: entry control, lighting, CCTV with retention, and a panic alarm
  • Vet and document your own staff and any security agency you engage — see running a private security agency in Sindh
  • Restrict what your business publishes about family members, schools and addresses. A great deal of targeting is built from social media
  • Brief staff on how to respond to a call and to whom to escalate it — a frightened employee handling it alone is the worst outcome
  • Consider insurance cover appropriate to the risk

Distinguish the real from the opportunistic

Many demands today come from people with no organisation behind them: a caller using a stolen SIM, someone who found details online, or a former employee.

That does not make it lawful or safe to ignore the threat, and it is not for you to make that assessment alone. But it does mean these cases are frequently solvable, because electronic demands are traceable — which is another reason to report rather than pay.

Where the source is a former employee or a commercial adversary using threats as leverage, the response combines the criminal complaint with the civil position. See protecting your business when an employee leaves and online blackmail and content takedown.

If a family member is threatened or taken

Treat any threat to a person as an emergency and involve the police and CPLC immediately. See kidnapping for ransom: the first hours and, where someone has been unlawfully detained, habeas corpus.

Where the demand comes with official colour

Businesses also face demands dressed as regulation — an inspection that will go away for a payment, a sealing threatened without lawful basis, a licence held up. That is a different problem with a different answer: document everything, insist on written notices and orders, and challenge unlawful action.

An authority acting without lawful authority can be restrained, and the existence of a written record changes behaviour more than anything else. See suing a government department, stay orders and injunctions and NAB references and white-collar defence.

How the firm can help

We advise businesses and families facing demands: what to report and to whom, how to preserve evidence, and how to conduct themselves through an investigation and a prosecution. We act for complainants in extortion and intimidation cases, including before Anti-Terrorism Courts, and we deal with unlawful action taken under colour of authority.

Matters of this kind are handled with complete discretion. See criminal law, or contact the firm.

If there is an immediate threat to anyone's safety, contact the police (15) and CPLC first, and us immediately afterwards.