BOMBAY TIMES (June 25, 2018)

Actor-singer Ali Zafar has filed a defamation suit in a district court in Pakistan against singer Meesha Shafi, who accused him of sexual harassment two months ago. The suit claims damages of Rs 1 billion. Zafar has said in the notice that Shafi had caused “tremendous injury” to his “reputation, goodwill, livelihood” through “false, slanderous and defamatory” allegations. The suit reads, “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 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’.”

Earlier, Shafi had confirmed she had received a legal notice sent by Zafar’s counsel, asking the actor-singer to delete her tweet alleging harassment and to issue an apology on Twitter, failing which he would file a Rs 1 billion defamation case against her. It was in April that Shafi took to Twitter to publicly accuse Zafar of physically harassing her on “more than one occasion”. Ali had denied the allegations, saying he would take legal action.