FIA declares Meesha Shafi ‘guilty’ of defamation drive against Ali Zafar

LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has declared Pakistani singer Meesha Shafi and eight others ‘guilty’ of running a smear campaign against singer-actor Ali Zafar on Tuesday.

According to details, the FIA’s cybercrime Lahore wing submitted an interim challan, before the court overlooking the FIR registered on Zafar’s complaint after Shafi accused him of sexual harassment in April 2018.

The interim challan said, “During the course of investigation so far Meesha Shafi, Iffat Omar, Maham Javaid, Leena Ghani, Haseemus Zaman, Fariha Ayub, Syed Faizan Raza, Hamna Raza and Ali Gul Pir have been found guilty in this case as per available oral and documentary evidence.”

“However, the complainant recorded his statement in favour of Hamna Raza to the extent of accepting her apology, thus she is not required in the investigation furthermore.” It stated.

The FIA’s cybercrime wing informed that Meesha Shafi could not present witnesses before the court that would back her allegations against Ali Zafar, thereby making her statement against him ‘defamatory’ and ‘false.’

“Ms Shafi posted defamatory and false allegations of sexual harassment against Ali Zafar on April 19, 2018 but she failed to produce any witnesses before it in favour of her allegations,” the investigation agency said.

The FIA further stated that the other suspects also failed to provide evidence in favour of the direct allegations posted by them on social media. “Resultantly, an FIR was registered on the court’s order in September last against them under section 20 (1) of Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 and R/W 109-PPC,” it added.

Later in November 2018, Ali Zafar had filed a complaint with FIA’s cybercrime wing, claiming he was receiving threats from multiple social media accounts.

Zafar informed that several fake accounts were created as part of a smear campaign against him. He also alleged that the profiles were linked to Shafi. “A Twitter account @nehasaigol1, which posted 3,000 defamatory tweets against me and my family only in one year, was created 50 days before Meesha’s allegations of sexual harassment,” he had told FIA .