Pakistan prohibits gambling outright. The Prevention of Gambling Act, 1977, enacted under the emergency on 21 May 1977, defines gaming to include wagering and betting, names horse racing expressly, and criminalises keeping, managing or financing a common gaming-house, being found gaming in one, and gaming in public or private places, with penalties from one month to three years and fines from Rs 100 to Rs 5,000; magistrates may enter, search, seize and detain, and the presence of cards, dice or gaming tables raises a presumption that the place is a gaming-house and everyone in it a gambler. The Ministry of Law's own note records that the Act ceased to have effect outside the Islamabad Capital Territory from 15 March 1978 when the emergency lapsed, and the provinces re-enacted it by ordinance, so the prohibition now runs on federal law in Islamabad and provincial law elsewhere. The text's one exception, section 11, exempts games in a tourist complex licensed by a provincial government and open only to foreigners. There is no regulator, no licence, no lottery and no tax, and no online provision of any kind; whether internet gambling sites are blocked and by whom was not retrievable from an official source for this record.
Citing the 1977 Act as the law in force in the provinces: since 1978 the provincial ordinances apply outside Islamabad. Treating section 11 as a casino licence regime: it is an exemption that depends on a provincial licence for a foreigners-only tourist complex. Assuming the penalty figures are current nationwide: provincial ordinances may set their own.
Prevention of Gambling Act, 1977 (Act XXVIII of 1977)
21 May 1977
Prevention of Gambling Act, 1977 enacted for the whole of Pakistan.
15 Mar 1978
Federal Act ceases to have effect outside Islamabad on the lapse of the emergency; provinces re-enact the prohibition by ordinance.
Nothing in the statute contemplates change, and the constitutional and religious setting that produced it has not shifted. The only legal seam is section 11, a foreigners-only tourist complex under provincial licence, and no provincial licence of that kind is recorded here. For operators the practical question is enforcement against offshore online play, which sits with telecom and cybercrime authorities whose measures this record does not cite.
The International Alliance Combating Telecom and Cyber Fraud was formally launched on 10 September, with the United Nations and Interpol represented as observers. Its initiating countries include Cambodia, whose regulator has spent the past year revoking casino licences over links to exactly the scam operations the alliance exists to disrupt.
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Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of Pakistan (Pakistan Code)
The Pakistan Code footnote states the Act ceased to have effect from 15 March 1978 on revocation of the emergency, except in the Islamabad Capital Territory; the provinces re-enacted it by ordinance.