January 19th, 2022
By Rehan Piracha
LAHORE
The Lahore High Court on Wednesday allowed the revision petition against stay of singer Meesha Shafi’s Rs 2 billion defamation suit, according to her counsel Saqib Jillani.
In February 2020, a sessions court in Lahore had ordered a stay on Meesha Shafi’s defamation lawsuit following Ali Zafar’s challenge that Meesha’s case could not proceed until a decision on his own defamation case against her was pending.
“The proceedings of Meesha Shafi’s defamation case will begin in the sessions court on February 1,” Jillani told Voicepk.net. The same court was also hearing Ali Zafar’s defamation case against Shafi, he said.
Jillani said Meesha Shafi had filed a Rs2 billion damages suit in the court against Ali Zafar for making false allegations against her on media in 2019. The damages suit includes Rs1bn for the loss of goodwill and reputation caused, and Rs1bn for mental torture and agony.
“The defamation suit was based on statements made by Ali Zafar on media particularly that Meesha Shafi was trying to become another Malala Yousfazai (Nobel laureate), her harassment allegations against him were false and she was trying to acquire Canadian citizenship by making up these harassment claims,” Jillani said.
“We had appealed the session court’s decision to stay proceedings of the defamation case in the Lahore High Court last year,” he added.
The high court has allowed proceedings of Meesha Shafi’s defamation case along with that of Ali Zafar’s case in the same court, Jillani said.
In her defamation case, Shafi had asked the court to pass a decree to declare Zafar’s statements regarding her as ‘false, malicious and defamatory’ and ‘made to injure the reputation of the plaintiff’.
“It is prayed that the defendant ( Ali Zafar) be permanently restrained from making any further defamatory statement against the plaintiff (Meesha Shafi),” she pleaded in the damages suit.
The sessions court is already hearing Ali Zafar’s Rs1b damages suit against Shafi over accusations of sexual harassment.
