A Lahore’s sessions court on Tuesday ruled in favour of singer Ali Zafar in his defamation lawsuit against Meesha Shafi, ordering her to pay Rs5 million in damages.<\/p>\n
Zafar had filed a\u00a0defamation claim of Rs1 billion\u00a0against Meesha after she accused him of harassment, with the case having spanned over eight years.<\/p>\n
The verdict was delivered by Additional Sessions Judge Asif Hayat. In its ruling, the court upheld Zafar’s claim and ordered Meesha to pay a fine of Rs5 million, stating that Meesha\u2019s allegations against Zafar were defamatory.<\/p>\n
Throughout the eight-year period, nine judges were changed, and 283 hearings were held. A total of 20 witnesses were called to testify, and their statements were recorded.<\/p>\n
During the final session, both sides\u2019 legal teams presented their closing arguments. The court had previously recorded the statements of the 20 witnesses, and cross-examinations were also completed.<\/p>\n
Read More:\u00a0Meesha Shafi asks court to dismiss Ali Zafar\u2019s defamation suit<\/p>\n
In 2018, Zafar\u00a0filed\u00a0a defamation suit against Meesha, who accused him of sexual\u00a0harassment. He filed the defamation suit through his counsel Rana Intizar, demanding Rs1 billion in damages.<\/p>\n
Intizar contended before the court that Meesha had damaged the reputation of his client with \u201cbaseless allegations\u201d. He pleaded that the court direct Shafi to tender an unconditional apology and pay Rs1 billion in damages.<\/p>\n
Zafar had previously sent a legal notice to Meesha stating that her tweets, dated April 19, 2018, were \u201cfalse, slanderous, and defamatory\u201d and \u201ccaused tremendous injury to the plaintiff\u2019s reputation, goodwill, and livelihood.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial court had originally imposed the gag order on January 24, 2019, following Zafar\u2019s defamation suit. Meesha\u2019s subsequent appeal to the LHC had been\u00a0dismissed.<\/p>\n
In 2021, the Supreme Court\u00a0accepted\u00a0Meesha\u2019s petition filed against the LHC order for the preliminary hearing. After hearing the arguments, the apex court remarked that the points raised by the petitioner must be reviewed, and clubbed the case with the suo motu notice taken to define sexual harassment, also pending in the court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Lahore’s sessions court on Tuesday ruled in favour of singer Ali Zafar in his defamation lawsuit against Meesha Shafi, ordering her to pay Rs5 million in damages. Zafar had filed a\u00a0defamation claim of Rs1 billion\u00a0against Meesha after she accused him of harassment, with the case having spanned over eight years. The verdict was delivered …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3308,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3303\/revisions\/3308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistantimesusa.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}