Asad Toor: Biography, Career, Court Reporting, Arrests and the Cases Against Him (2026)

Who is Asad Toor?

Here is the simplest way to place him. Asad Toor is a court reporter who lost his place on television and built an audience without it.

He is not a studio star. He spent fifteen years behind the camera and in the press gallery of the Supreme Court. What made him known was a decision, around 2020, to say on his own channel the things his employers would not put on air.

That choice has had a price. He has been charged, summoned, beaten, jailed, barred from travel and cut off from his bank account. He is still reporting.

Asad Toor’s importance lies less in any single story than in what his treatment shows: where the limits of reporting in Pakistan are, and what happens to a journalist who keeps walking past them.

Early career

He began in journalism in 2005.

For most of the next fifteen years he worked in television news in Islamabad, not as a presenter but in the newsroom.

• At Aaj News he rose to senior producer. A producer decides which stories run, arranges the guests and shapes the programme. The anchor is the face; the producer is the brain.
• He later worked as a reporter for Samaa TV.

His speciality became the courts. He attended hearings at the Supreme Court and the Islamabad High Court day after day, and came to know the judges, the lawyers and the files.

What does a court reporter do?

It is one of the most demanding beats in journalism, and one of the most useful to the public.

In Pakistan the courts are also where politics is decided. Prime ministers have been removed there, elections ordered and constitutional amendments tested. A reporter who understands the Supreme Court understands a great deal about how the country is run.

How a hearing becomes a story

Consider an ordinary morning in Courtroom One. The scene that follows is imagined, to show how the work goes; it is not a report of a real hearing.

A bench of three judges sits at half past nine. The first case concerns the appointment of a senior official. The government’s lawyer asks for more time. One judge, plainly irritated, asks why a file that should take a week has taken a year. Another remarks that the court’s earlier order seems to have been ignored. The case is adjourned for a fortnight.

The written order that follows will say only that the matter is adjourned. Everything of interest, the judges’ impatience, the hint of what they may decide, the government’s embarrassment, was said aloud and is recorded nowhere except in the notebooks of the reporters present.

That is why court reporters matter, and why judges and governments alike are sensitive about what they write. A remark from the bench, reported the same afternoon, can move markets, unsettle a minister or start a political storm.

Why the courts are so often the story

In most countries the superior courts are in the news a few times a year. In Pakistan they are in the news every day.

• Politics ends up there. Disputes over elections, the dismissal of governments and the powers of generals have all been decided by judges.
• The court can act on its own. For years the Supreme Court took up matters of public concern without anyone filing a case, from the price of sugar to the conduct of the police.
• Judges disagree in public. Letters between judges, dissenting notes and quarrels over which bench hears which case have become news in themselves.

A reporter on this beat is therefore covering politics by other means. That brings influence, and it brings risk.

Missing persons

One strand of his reporting stands out. For years families have gone to the courts saying that their sons or husbands were taken by state agencies and never produced. Judges hold hearings, summon officials and set deadlines.

Television seldom covers these hearings. He has covered them steadily. His public biography describes him as known for raising his voice for missing persons.

Going independent, 2020

In 2020 he launched his own YouTube channel, Asad Toor Uncensored.

The name was a statement of purpose. On television, a reporter’s script passes through a producer, an editor and, in effect, the channel’s owner. Certain subjects are simply not broadcast. On his own channel there was no such filter.

He talked about what happened inside courtrooms in sensitive cases, about tensions between judges and about the military’s involvement in politics.

By early 2024 the channel had more than 160,000 subscribers.

The first case, 2020

In September 2020 the Federal Investigation Agency registered a case against him. It accused him of defaming state institutions on social media.

He was working for Samaa TV at the time. He lost that job.

In early 2021 the Lahore High Court dismissed the case for lack of evidence.

The assault, May 2021

On the night of 25 May 2021, three men entered his flat in Islamabad.

According to his account:

• they tied him up and beat him;
• they questioned him about who was paying him;
• they told him they were from an intelligence agency.

He was found bound and injured and was taken to hospital. Security-camera footage of him staggering out of the building was widely shared.

The agency denied any involvement. The government of the day announced an inquiry. Nobody was arrested, and no finding was ever published.

Within days, instead of his attackers being identified, he received a summons from federal investigators over a complaint that he had defamed a state institution. Press freedom groups protested.

A protest and another case, 2022

In March 2022 journalists demonstrated at the National Press Club in Islamabad. Police then opened a criminal case against him and others on charges including rioting.

The Islamabad High Court told police not to arrest anyone. The Attorney General later informed the court that the state would withdraw the case.

Arrest and jail, 2024

The most serious episode came two years later.

Background

In early 2024 the Supreme Court was at the centre of a storm. It had upheld the decision to strip a major party of its election symbol weeks before a general election. Judges were attacked fiercely on social media. The government set up a team to investigate what it called a malicious campaign against the judiciary.

What happened to him

He had spent about three weeks in custody, the last part of it in Adiala Jail.

Journalists’ unions, bar associations and international press freedom groups had campaigned for his release throughout.

After his release

The pressure did not end with bail.

• Bank accounts. During 2025 federal investigators had his bank accounts, and those of relatives, frozen for a time as part of their inquiries.
• His channel. Steps were taken to have his YouTube channel blocked in Pakistan.
• Travel. In August 2025 he was stopped at Islamabad airport as he tried to board a flight to the United States, where he had been invited on an official exchange programme for journalists. He was told his name was on a no-fly list.

Recognition

In December 2024 the Embassy of the Netherlands in Pakistan gave him its Human Rights Tulip award for his journalism.

The Tulip is an award of the Dutch government for people who defend human rights at personal risk. Dutch embassies give it at national level in a number of countries each year. For a journalist under pressure, such recognition has a practical use beyond the honour. It tells the authorities that foreign governments are watching what happens to him.

It also cuts the other way. Officials and hostile commentators have long accused journalists who receive foreign awards and invitations of serving foreign interests. The prize that offers protection also supplies his critics with an argument.

The summons of 2026

The latest chapter began in late July 2026.

His lawyers said he was willing to cooperate with the inquiry but feared being detained as he had been in 2024.

What has happened since early August 2026 was not found for this article.

The law used against him

Most of the cases in this story were brought under one law.

Journalists’ bodies opposed the 2025 changes strongly. Their objection is that “false information” is not defined precisely, so the decision about what is false rests with the investigators. The government says the law is needed to curb deliberate disinformation.

What supporters and critics say

Supporters say he does the work that journalism exists for: he reports on the powerful, on subjects others avoid, from the public record of the courts. They point out that every case against him so far has collapsed or been withdrawn. Press freedom organisations around the world have taken up his cause.

Critics say he has abandoned neutrality and become a campaigner. Some lawyers and judges have accused him of personal attacks on members of the bench, going beyond fair comment on their judgments. Officials say he has spread unverified claims about state institutions. And some fellow journalists feel that the line between reporting and opinion on his channel is often blurred.

Each view has merit. Online journalism without an editor carries real risks of error and excess. But the answer to a wrong statement is a correction or, at most, a civil suit decided by a court. It is not a beating in the night or three weeks in a cell without trial.

Words used in this article

Timeline: Asad Toor at a glance

Why his story matters

• It shows where the red lines are. The subjects that brought him trouble are the subjects Pakistani television does not touch.
• It shows how laws about online crime are used. A statute passed to fight fraud and harassment has become the main tool against reporters.
• It shows the value of the courts. Each time, it was a judge who set him free. Whatever their flaws, the courts have been the last protection of the journalists who cover them.

To understand the institutions he reports on, read our plain-English guide to Pakistan’s politics and our explainer on the National Assembly.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Wikipedia, “Asad Ali Toor” — as last edited on 10 February 2026.
• Committee to Protect Journalists, “Pakistani journalist Asad Ali Toor arrested after responding to summons for questioning” — February 2024.
• Committee to Protect Journalists, “Pakistan court remands journalist Asad Ali Toor in cybercrime case” — March 2024.
• Al Jazeera, “Pakistani journalist assaulted in latest press freedom attack” — 26 May 2021.
• Dawn, “NCCIA summons journalist Asad Ali Toor over allegedly spreading ‘false information'” — July 2026.
• Dawn, “IHC tells NCCIA to provide journalist Asad Toor with details of allegations against him” — 31 July 2026.
• Associated Press of Pakistan, “IHC bars NCCIA from harassing journalist Asad Ali Toor, summons investigating officer” — 6 August 2026.
• JournalismPakistan, “Asad Ali Toor summoned by NCCIA under PECA section 26A” — July 2026.