Actor-singer Ali Zafar has filed a defamation suit in a district court in Lahore, Pakistan against singer Meesha Shafi, who accused him of sexual harassment two months ago on social media.
The suit claims damages of Rs1 billion (Dh30.2 million).
Filed under the Defamation Ordinance 2002 on Saturday, Zafar has said in the notice that Shafi had caused “tremendous injury” to his “reputation, goodwill, livelihood” through “false, slanderous and defamatory” allegations, according to Geo News.
“As the defamatory statements are patently false, it can only be concluded that this malicious campaign has been launched against the plaintiff as part of a motivated conspiracy to tarnish the plaintiff’s good image through making false accusations,” the suit reads.
“The defendant has associated herself with the global #MeToo movement, with one of the launchers of the #MeToo movement Rose McGowan labelling the defendant as ‘a heroine for our times’,” it went on.
In the breakdown of the Rs1 billion damages, the notice read: “Be that as it may, that due to the defamatory campaign being spearheaded by the defendant, the plaintiff besides special damages in case of defamation further suffered the following damages: Mental torture: Rs20 million, Loss of contacts: Rs20 million, Loss of reputation/goodwill: Rs500 million, Loss of business opportunities: Rs400 million.”
Earlier, Shafi had confirmed that she had received a legal notice sent by Zafar’s counsel, asking the singer-actor to delete her tweet alleging harassment and issue an apology on Twitter, failing which he would file a Rs1 billion defamation case against her.
Shafi took to Twitter in April to publicly accuse Zafar of physically harassing her on “more than one occasion”.
Ali denied all allegations, saying he would take the matter to court.
