Islamabad: Pakistan’s top singer and actor Ali Zafar has sent a legal notice to fellow musician Meesha Shafi for the sexual harassment allegations she made against him on Twitter last week.
In the legal notice, Zafar has demanded that Shafi deletes the tweet that contains her sexual harassment allegations against him and issues an apology on Twitter, failing which he will file a Rs1 billion (Dh55.29 million) defamation suit against her.
The notice also sought “an apology using the same social media platform of Twitter proclaiming our client’s innocence.”
Legal notice
It adds that: “However, if you fail to delete the tweet and issue an apology based on Twitter within 14 days of receipt of the legal notice, we have definite instructions from our client to seek remedy for redressal of his grievance and claim damages to the tune of at least Rs100 crore.”
Shafi’s legal team has strongly dismissed the contents of the legal notice as “false”.
“Meesha’s allegations of sexual harassment against Zafar are based on truth, thus the issue of defamation does not arise,” Barrister Mohammad Ahmad Pansota told local media.
Pansota has claimed the singer has “proof of sexual harassment” against Zafar to back up her claim.
Shafi announced on Twitter that she had appointed Pansota and Nighat Dad, a digital rights activist, as her legal team overseeing issues relating to her sexual harassment claim against Zafar.
Last week, Shafi posted a statement on Twitter, accusing Zafar of physically harassing her on “more than one occasion”.
“This happened to me despite the fact that I am an empowered, accomplished woman who is known for speaking her mind! This happened to me as a mother of two children,” she said.
Zafar emphatically denied all claims of sexual harassment, threatening legal action against the singer.
“I intend to take this through the courts of law, and to address this professionally and seriously rather than to lodge any accusations here,” he wrote on Twitter.
The global #MeToo campaign encouraged several Pakistani celebrities to reveal their personal experience of child sexual abuse — most notably Frieha Altaf and Maheen Khan — but Shafi’s statement accusing Zafar of harassment is the first case of a Pakistani artist publicly calling out a fellow artist for sexual misconduct.
